


The Black Prince

by ColinFilth



Series: The Black Prince [1]
Category: Kingsman: The Secret Service (2015)
Genre: (sometimes at the same time), Age Difference, Alternate Universe - Painter, Anal Sex, Class Differences, Erectile Dysfunction, Fantasizing, Growing Old, Growing Up, Honest that's all there is to it, Intercrural Sex, Intergluteal Sex, M/M, Masturbation, Midlife Crisis, Muses, Mutual Masturbation, Oral Sex, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Slow Burn, There isn't actually that much sex in this
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-04-24
Updated: 2018-03-18
Packaged: 2018-06-04 02:37:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 27
Words: 93,120
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6637963
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ColinFilth/pseuds/ColinFilth
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>"Harry Hart (1960-) is one of this century's most renowned painters. Hart is known by the country's elite and the public for his Royal portraits, as well as views and landscapes of London wherein his training in Florence and Camberwell shines through. Though his portraits have inspired comparison to the work of Sargent or Boldini, his landscapes are reminiscent of Martin or Pether. In this twenty-first century, Hart's work has the old-fashioned, well-loved, academic quality that lines museums even nowadays[...]"</i>
</p><p>Harry Hart is fifty-six, and bored.</p><p>And then a boy smashes into his life like the first smear of paint on a blank canvas.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I had both a martini and a whiskey, which Harry Hart would not be proud of, so notes shall wait.
> 
> [ _Olimpio Fusco_ by John Singer Sargent](http://i.imgur.com/gb6Xr1q.jpg), at any rate.

One evening in November, Harry Hart found himself _bored_.

He has spent the day in Wren House painting the forty-third heir to the throne of Great Britain under the watchful eyes of her grandparents and yet it seems to Harry that he has done nothing all day. The near-finished canvas has been delivered to his studio and he has politely declined all offers of the house staff to call for a cab before starting the twenty minutes’ walk home in a sudden bout of masochism. The pavement is wet, and a light rain drizzles unrelentlessly over his face. At least the weather seems to fit his dreadful mood.

When he had been twenty-five and fresh out the Florence Academy of Art and after a short run in Camberwell, shakily painting Lady Diana in the very same palace, Harry had felt as though all his dreams were coming true. He was painting, _for a living_. He was painting things people _wanted_ to see _._ That was all he had ever wanted. Then the snowballing - Chester King hunting him down and commissioning a fortune’s worth of paintings to sell in his gallery, spots in exhibitions all over Europe and book covers and the National Portrait Gallery - it all had felt like cherries on top of cherries that were, thirty years later, starting to taste sour and rotten.

Walking down the poshness of Victoria Road, Harry feels almost embarrassed at himself. Everything in his life has led to this, to the bespoke suit falling perfectly to smooth, polished oxfords that walk home everyday to a house in the Kensington mews. He could not suddenly _resent_ everything that has brought him comfort.

Could he?

_“It sounds well like a midlife crisis,”_ Merlin says distractedly when Harry ducks under an awning long enough to call him.

“It’s not a midlife crisis,” Harry says, starting back up, bowing his head down against the rain that keeps blurring up his glasses. “Is it?”

_“I reckon you’re overdue for one_. _”_

“I bought a flat in Paris I scarcely use eight years ago, isn’t that a midlife crisis?” Harry replies dryly.

_“As your lawyer, I call that an excellent financial decision. That flat could be worth thousands more now.”_

“And as my friend?”

_“I’m not your friend.”_ Harry doesn’t say anything. Merlin sighs. _“As your friend, I think you just need a change of scenery, Harry. Take the train. Make use of your Parisian pied-a-terre. Take a holiday.”_

“Maybe I will,” Harry grumbles sulkily, feeling nine and ninety years old at the same time, and he finally catches on to the murmur of voices behind Merlin. “Am I interrupting?”

_“Yes,”_ Merlin answers bluntly. _“Relax. Stay in tonight. Don’t let King drag you to any openings, it’s time he finds himself a new shiny toy. I’ll see you later.”_

Harry blames it on Merlin, Steve Jobs, and whoever else available that he is so intent on disconnecting the call that he does not politely sidestep to avoid colliding into the young man whose head has just crashed into his collarbone.

He is just about to tut, apologise, and walk away in the way thousands of Londoners have before him when the boy positively _explodes_ , and Harry whips his head around.

_Oh, lovely_.

“Who do you bloody _think_ you are?!”

“I am terribly sorry,” Harry says, straightening up and looking the lad up and down. “I was preoccupied. My apologies.”

“Oh, you was _preoccupied_ ,” he snarls, his accent going proper Queen’s in a mimicry of Harry’s before dropping back to his own cockney. “You’se so fucking important, all suited and booted with all the voyels proper, we common types should just bow out the way, innit?” His cheeks have gone red, the arch of his flailing arms gone ample to demonstrate the supposed size of Harry’s ego. His eyebrows are two lovely arches over his narrowed eyes and there’s a dimple at his chin.

“Sit for me,” Harry says, with the confidence of men people rarely say _no_ to.

The lad stops at once, his arms staying up in a silent _what the fuck_ before he mouths the words, too.

“My name is Harry Hart,” he adds hurriedly, backing up against the stone wall of Gloucester Road station. “I am a painter. I would like you to sit for me, as a model.”

The boy puts his arms down slowly and tilts his head to the side. “You having a laugh there, guv?”

“I would pay you for your time, obviously,” Harry says, producing his card and pen from the inside of his suit jacket, “my number is on here, but I have a studio in Bethnal Green.” He writes down the address carefully, glancing up at the young man to ensure that he has not yet ran away. He hasn’t. He’s staring at Harry dubiously, stuck between anger and laughter. “Please, feel free to drop by anytime.”

He accepts the card dumbly with the tip of his fingers, looking down at it and back at Harry like Harry just handed him a live grenade.

“What is your name, young man?” Harry asks lightly, and the spell is broken.

“This some fucking kind of set up?” the boy asks, brows furrowed, mouth twisted uglily. “I come over, you sit me down on a sofa, cameras start rolling, I’m arse up and mouth open for tricks and trade?” He shakes his head and turns to walk away. “Name’s _toss off_ , wanker.”

Harry raises an eyebrow, blinks a few times, and starts on the walk back home.

After four fingers of whiskey he unearthes an old sketchbook and a few pencils - he started keeping all his equipment in his studio somewhere between 1997 and his fortieth birthday, in the middle of cellphones and waking up covered in charcoal in his kitchen. Harry’s own chicken scratch dates the faded sketches in there to the mid-noughties and men wearing too-wide shiny suits over nehru shirts.

He starts with the slope of the shoulders.

Not a bow. A line, straight, tense. His fingers itch for the relaxed curve Hunt favoured, but his eyes recall the defensiveness of the muscles. What had he been wearing? A jacket. Letterman style, not warm enough for the season. The arrow-like lines of a polo shirt collar peeking out from under the jacket and pointing the way down the smooth planes of a flat torso. The jaw, square, shaved but not closely enough, crowned on each side by the curves of a lovely ear. More whiskey pools in Harry’s empty stomach and he scratches the two, three lines of the Adam’s apple, so defined under young, taut, unblemished skin.

And the lips…

Harry wants Mona Lisa’s demure smile, Vermeer’s Girl’s relaxed ghost of a smile over spit-slick lips, but he settles for the pouts Rossetti pushed on the mouth of his subjects. The dip of the cupid’s bow, there only to place a finger upon and leading up to the nose, soft but straight. A pause for another finger of whiskey and a scratch of his pencil over the chin for the dimple that makes the pout defiant, not inviting, an unkind sort of snarl. Harry smears the soft lead of the pencil over the pad of his middle finger and then strokes over the paper, once, twice, the barely-there blush that bloomed from the kiss of the cold and the fire of fury.

Oh but the _eyes-_

Dark, darker than they should be, narrow and deep-set beneath furrowed brows. Deep-set bags under them, filled with the young years of sleepless nights, but no dark circles. Or just the barest hint of them - a tap of his greyed fingertip under each eye, darkening furthermore the glare that looks up at him from the paper, from the corner of the Gloucester Road tube station. Shadowed under the bill of a hat, but Harry scrambles for a small rubber and brushes it into the whites of the eyes and over the tip of the nose like a tickle, imagines the skin wrinkling up in annoyance and the pout furthering and…

And, and.

Harry gets up, does not wash his hands, and barely entertains the idea of a wank before going to bed.

He does not dream, and when he wakes the next morning he is uncomfortably hot, having forgotten to turn the heating off the night before somewhere between the boy’s eyelashes and his earlobes. The entire first floor of the house feels stuffy, and Harry stands under the lukewarm jet of the shower shivering while the water warms up.

The lather of the soap in his hands is grey for less than a second before the graphite on his fingers gets washed away. Later, in the mirror, the hair at his temples looks like the foam had, white streaked with grey. Harry is fifty-six years old. _Well overdue for a midlife crisis,_ Merlin’s brogue croons in his ear.

In the drawing room his whiskey glass still has a sip left into it and the crystal is covered with a smattering of greasy grey fingerprints. The sketchbook is left open to the boy glaring up at him.

Harry takes the glass in the kitchen and washes it carefully before setting it in the dishwasher. He dutifully wipes the graphite and the pencil and rubber shavings away from the varnished wood, but leaves the sketchbook open on the side table.

He listens to the messages on the ansaphone while the tea steeps and the toast browns, standing up in his kitchen and staring at his steadily darkening tea as Chester King’s assistant, Merlin, Elenore at Penguin Classics, Chester King himself, a columnist, a blogger, Merlin again, James Spencer from Kingsman, his agent, all rattling off hellos and goodbyes, meetings, requests, news, appointments, reminders. Harry splashes sugar and lemon and milk in his tea, like he does every morning, and eats his toast with a smear of Benecol and the radio tuned to the BBC World Service.

Only on his way out the door does Harry allow himself another glance at the sketchbook. It’s full of mistakes, of course, nowhere near close to the subject.

_Still_ -

To hell with just a glance. Harry sits almost in spite of himself, strokes the tip of one nail along the length of the page. He picks up the pencil sitting next to the sketchbook and twirls it between two fingers before adding a stroke there and there. Not enough to truly add anything but depth, no details. He doubts he has any left to add. He doesn’t even know the boy’s name. He darkens the shadow under the chin absent-mindedly and rakes his mind, Adam and Alfred and Yvonne and Calliope and, suddenly recalls one visit to the Met in New York City and the academic brushstrokes of the French Gerome amongst the _Birth of Venus_ and _Springtime_ …

At the bottom of the page Harry writes the date, and _Galatea._


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Three fingers of Jameson this time, and I welcome you with Jean-Leon Gerome's [_Pygmalion and Galatea_](http://i.imgur.com/kAILMFM.jpg), which is on view at the Met Fifth Avenue in Gallery 827. Painting is sort of NSFW, there's a lovely white bum.
> 
> Betas were concerned Harry was going to spend the rest of his life sad and alone, but I reckon third time's the charm.

On the cab drive to Savile Row Harry watches the buildings of Cromwell Road pass before him, the Natural History museum and the Victoria and Albert, where he used to be able to get lost in, years ago. Now he scarcely sets foot in the place if it’s not for some opening or another, led by Chester to be paraded like a prize dog.

Along the bright greenness of Hyde Park under a white cloudy sky Harry sets his forehead against the cold glass of the car’s window. Down the residential buildings of Mayfair they go before the car finally slows down into Savile Row, but Harry doesn’t move.

“Is this the wrong address, sir?” the cabbie asks.

“No,” Harry says after a pause, pulling out his wallet. “No, this is fine.”

Out of the car, he stands still and stares at the shop’s storefront, showing the tasteful ensembles du jour, an impeccable double-breasted suit in a deep navy blue and the subtlest pinstripes, a dark wool topcoat and a more casual outfit with an emblazoned cashmere cardigan that Harry has plenty of in his closet.

When he makes his entrance into Kingsman, one of the tailors glances up from his desk and quirks him a polite but friendly smile, putting down a swatchbook and striding easily towards him with his hand outstretched.

“Harry Hart,” he says smoothly, “Always a pleasure to see you, sir. As I said on the phone, your suit is ready, if you’d like us to do your final fitting now?”

“James,” Harry nods back. “If you’re not too busy right now, of course.”

Harry is whisked away to a fitting room in a flurry of _Nonsense, Harry, we have all the time in the world for you_. He declines offers of tea and spirits and stands very still as James Spencer himself slides the jacket into place and smoothes out invisible wrinkles. It fits perfectly, as usual. James stands by his side, looking the very picture of restrained pride, far more dashing in a bisque beige suitand an emerald green necktie than Harry feels, even dressed to the nines in the finest wool blend.

“Something wrong, sir?” James asks, smile unwavering, taking a step back. Harry shakes his head.

“My apologies, James. I find myself quite preoccupied these days. Not that I do not enjoy your company, as per usual, but I am afraid Mr King is waiting for me.”

“Ah,” James exclaims, slipping out of the room to let Harry change back into his own suit. “You would not be Harry Hart if you did not keep dear Chester King waiting.”

Harry stares at himself in the mirror for a second after that, standing under the muted lights that make his wrinkles seem not so pronounced, the hair at his temples not so grey, and turns away from the mirror to change.

He pays and arranges for delivery as per usual, as he has done countless times in the past. He first came to Kingsman before James and his associate, curiously also named James, were even apprentices, when King had just purchased the space one floor up to open his own gallery and decided his new protege needed a proper suit.

On the walls of the shop are photographs and sketches, some of which are his. He remembers delivering them - _a token of my gratitude_ , he’d said, feeling very much like a boy offering scribbles on scrap paper to be hung up on his parents’ fridge with magnets. Some are of the shop’s storefront in 1986, wide striped neckties tucked into low waistcoats and an abundance of large pinstripes; or 1990, minimalist, baggy suits that all the tailors on Savile Row longed to forget. Harry had drawn both Jameses, too, standing in front of the shop dreadfully young in 1993 with too-long hair brushing the collars of velvet blazers and both sporting pristine chelsea boots.

Harry catches a glimpse of the resolutely modern double-breasted suit in the storefront on his way out, and the lovely warm topcoat with its clean lines. He stops short and thinks of his Galatea clad in jeans and a blouson in November. He recalls the line of his shoulders, pictures it accentuated by the sharpness of a suit jacket, the trimness of his waist cinched by the double rows of buttons and his torso lengthened by the pinstripes-

“Sir?” James asks behind him, voice all velvet and poise, and Harry turns to him to nod stiffly and marches out into the vestibule.

Out there little has changed - the red velvet-covered wooden steps creak a bit more, as do Harry’s knees. The large wooden doors up the two flights of stairs have not changed at all, the golden plaque reading _King’s Gallery_ still as shiny as it had been on the first day. Back then Harry had thought, fleetingly - naively even, maybe - that it had something to do with Her Majesty.

Not that Chester King doesn’t behave as a right monarch, mind.

Sitting at his desk like in a throne he half-rises to shake Harry’s hand, a tight-lipped smile stretching his thin mouth.

“Have a seat, Harry.” he says levelly, gesturing to the tan leather armchair opposite his Edwardian mahogany desk. Chester leans back, just in time for a demurely dressed secretary to slip inside the small office carrying a tray with a teapot and two teacups, complete with saucers. They stay silent as she pours them each a cup, spooning cream and sugar into both cups before adding a splash of lemon juice into Harry’s. He smiles after her as she leaves, the kitten heels of her shoes click-clacking in her step against the wooden floors, smoothly and regularly like a metronome.

“Pretty bird, isn’t she,” Chester says casually, rearranging papers on his desk. Harry takes a sip of his tea. “I have a very interested buyer for the _Dawn over Whitehall_. She promised an answer by the end of the week. _Storm over Albert Bridge_ has been shipped off to Salcombe as planned,” Chester rattles off, looking up at Harry over the top of his glasses. “Have you given an answer to Penguin about the book covers?”

“Might I remind you that, try as you might, you are not my agent?” Harry says drily, setting down his cup into its saucer. The scrap of porcelain is louder than expected, and Harry shifts in his seat.

“Might _I_ remind you,” Chester starts in a moderate tone, “that if it were not for me, you might be painting tourists in Leicester Square as we speak?”

Harry says nothing. Chester stares at him some more. Even at fifty-six, just as it did when he was twenty-five, that makes Harry feel like a schoolboy sitting in the headmaster’s office. He lets Chester drone on for a bit about sales and numbers.

“Those inks of Green Park sold rather well,” Chester points out. “Cheap trinkets. Let us see about something similar, shall we?”

Harry nods and does not bother pointing out that those _cheap trinkets_ were priced at eight thousand pounds.

“Being able to afford a bit of art works well on the lower class,” he continues absently, scribbling a note in the margin of a paper. “Makes them feel like they are part of the elite. Not that they are exactly like us, mind.”

“If we are done here, and with respect, Chester,” Harry says drily before he can swallow the words back down, “You’re a snob.”

“ _With_ _respect_?” Chester echoes faintly, sitting back in his chair. 

“The world is changing. It does us no favours to hold onto some semblance of superiority. Long gone are the times where painting and portraiture were reserved to the elite,” Harry says, rising from his seat. “Even if those portraits were _just_ painted by Leicester Square artists.”

Behind his desk, under the large gold-framed oil portrait of himself, Chester splutters. Harry barely spares him a glance before walking out.

Harry scarcely notices the young woman sitting in a plush armchair in the hallway. She gets up when he exits the office, her back ramrod straight, her gaze somewhere behind him.

“Ah, Harry,” Chester says, “I do not believe you have met Miss Morton?” He watches and gestures between them. “Miss Morton, Harry Hart. Harry, this is Roxanne Morton.”

“It is an honour to meet you, sir,” Morton says with a surprisingly strong handshake. _Pretty bird_ , Harry recalls, and he hopes for her sake she’s not looking for a secretary job.

“Likewise.”

“I am sure the both of you would have loads to chit chat about,” Chester says without kindness, “Miss Morton was educated in Florence as well. In fact, I see a lot of you in her, Harry. She has produced some very impressive work. You might have seen her portrait of the Duchess of Cambridge?”

“I have,” he says. “Exquisite work indeed, Miss Morton,” Harry says. And it was. The Duchess smiling demurely, her features a haze around her eyes and mouth.

Morton smiles confidently at Harry now, somewhere between proud and impressed, if very discreetly so.

“Come on in, Miss Morton”, Chester says, and Harry lets her pass him by.

Out the gallery and down the stairs and out on the street, Harry doesn’t stop to think. He flags down a cab and rattles off the address of the Bethnal Green studio.

It takes nearly an hour for the cabbie to get there, weaving in and out of traffic along with mid-morning commuters and numerous busses. Harry stares out the window, seeing Chester’s face, Roxy’s confidence, his own naivety forty years ago. Chester, forty-two then with a full head of wavy blond hair and a trendy, shiny suit, had stood in the middle of his brand new gallery space and offered Harry everything he could have wished for. Commissions from London’s elite, a space to show his art and sell it, more opportunities than he’d known what to do with. It had only seemed normal, natural even, that in exchange, Harry gave him his loyalty by signing quite happily his exclusivity over to Chester King’s gallery unless specifically authorised by Mr King himself.

_I see a lot of you in her, Harry_.

On a whim, he phones Merlin. After half a dozen rings, the call goes to voicemail, and Harry clears his throat and lowers his voice like a wee lad telling secrets.

His head feels a little clearer when the car reaches the studio. He putters around the small kitchen making himself tea and reheating Marks and Spencer’s finest frozen prawn curry ready meal. Harry eats in front of the canvas that had been delivered to the studio the day before, studying flaws and weak spots, shedding his jacket and shirt to get back to work in his undershirt.

He paints until the light gets too bad for him to keep going, turns all the lamps on, and paints some more. Five hours - and two months, if he’s honest with himself - later, he takes two steps back and his head feels empty, his fingers cramped where they’ve been holding onto the brush. Eloise looks back at him, all five feet of her, sitting on a toile de Jouy armchair in her grandparents’ lavish living room. Her dark blond hair is golden under the rays of sunshine streaming in through the large windows, her green eyes staring into the viewer’s, neither defiant nor adoring. She’s between childish sweetness and adolescent awkwardness.

Silently, almost reverently, Harry takes the still-wet painting into the large entryway closet, keeping it dust-free for the weeks of drying time ahead of it, and goes to make himself a cup of tea.

Harry’s planner is blissfully and terrifyingly empty. 

Sipping his tea on his painting stool, he obediently gets to work cleaning palettes and brushes, putting away the polaroid photographs he had taken of the young heir. In a nearby drawer he finds an assortment of too-short graphite pencils, and remembers the sketchbook still sitting open in his drawing room back home, Galatea perpetually glaring at him. _We common types_ , he recalls, and hastily packs a handful of pencils and a proper sketchbook full of thick, creamy paper.

The Camden Market stalls close down at half six, Harry remembers as he walks down Camden High Street, umbrella in the crook of his arm. It’s not raining, but the sky is grey and overcast. There’s still a handful of tourists, wearing plastic rain ponchos with their cameras slung around their necks and overpriced coffees and hot chocolates in their hands. The street performers are packing up and the stalls are being folded down and merchandise gathered up. Down Camden Lock and along the walkways of Regent’s Canal, Harry finds chatting tourists and locals, getting a headstart on drinking and huffing out very apparent clouds of cigarette smoke in the humid cold. Most are walking, but some are sitting wherever they can, on bollards and gates. _We don’t give a fuck_ , the brick wall says, and Harry doesn’t doubt that.

Leaning gingerly against a stone wall, Harry fumbles for his sketchbook and a pencil. It is late enough both in the day and in the year that the light is bad, the canal scarcely lit. Feeling a little put out, Harry sketches the clean lines of the Kentish Town Road bridge, the curves of a girl’s shaved head emerging from the softness of her scarf, the vague contours of a group of loud tourists. It is cold and the night is falling fast. More people are leaving and walking by than stopping long enough for Harry to be able to properly draw anything; a small child trailing after his parents, Brazilian tourists, a pack of hurried businessmen in ill-fitting suits, a lone runner, and Galatea.

At first Harry doesn’t move. He doesn’t really register him. It is only when his voice carries to Harry, the cockney accent ringing in Harry’s ears, saying something mundane, _Ain’t there a proper pub ‘round here?_ that Harry fully realises, and calls out to the boy without fully meaning to. He stopped believing in fate around the same time he stopped believing in the Tooth Fairy, but he starts after the boy nonetheless, staunchly refusing to run.

“Lad,” Harry calls, because he doesn’t know what else to say.

The boy - his Galatea - does not turn around, but one of his friends does, an overgrown young man with round eyes that stare blankly at Harry before he nudges his mates. Galatea stares at him for half a second before his brow furrows and he tips his chin up, taking a step away from his friends and towards Harry.

“What’s this, then?” he asks with a nod. “You been following me?”

“Lord, no,” Harry says, holding his head up in return. “This is merely a coincidence. I simply wanted to know if you had time to think about my proposal.”

The friends are silent, their eyes trained on Harry.

“Sure did, guv. Suddenly realised getting fucked more literally than I do everyday seemed brill. Where the fuck do I sign?”

“You do realise this was a serious offer,” Harry says placidly, leaning on his umbrella. “I have references. I have the means to pay you quite handsomely for your time.”

There’s a silence. For a minute, Harry thinks the boy might accept. His friends are whispering amongst themselves. People keep passing by. What are they thinking? What is Harry thinking?

What is his Galatea thinking?

“No ta,” he says finally, smiling brazenly at Harry before spinning on his heel. “Follow me and I’ll call the coppers, yeah?”

And then he’s gone.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Many thanks to everyone who is commenting and leaving kudos! In this chapter things are actually, properly starting to Happen, this is so odd.
> 
> [_Seated nude with arms folded_](http://i.imgur.com/AcsmM2w.jpg) by William Frederick Foster. Dream on, Harry Hart.

The next morning, Harry has two pieces of toast with Benecol, and a cup of tea. Sugar, lemon, milk. It’s a Wednesday, and he dresses in his brand new suit for his meeting with Elenore at Penguin Classics.

The sketchbook is still open on the end table in the drawing room.

It’s a twenty-minute drive to Wrights Lane. Harry idly watches the old red brick and modern green glass buildings pass him by. This is not his first time in the now-familiar neighbourhood, not even in the past few months. He has met Elenore many times before, both with his agent and without, with heads of department present and project leaders and lawyers. However, Elenore had said, as prim and proper as usual but with an air of conspiracy in her voice; _this is just the two of us this time_.

She greets him with a bright smile in a smart pantsuit, her short cropped hair making her dark neck look longer, her long earrings dangling as she nods politely at Harry and shakes his hand.

“They’ve settled on the titles,” she says without preamble, tilting her head up towards the ceiling and the floors of important people above them. “This is where the real fun begins.”

“And here I thought the months of pourparler and contracts were a right laugh,” Harry quips back, and she laughs louder than she’s probably supposed to.

_I won a scholarship over my analysis of your painting of Highgate Cemetery,_ Elenore had said the first time he’d met her, her hand shaking slightly in his, hurriedly, like she hadn’t meant to. He had felt a wave of pride and fondness wash over him. _It’s an honour,_ she’d said, and Harry hadn’t had time to reply that the honour was all his.

“Alright,” Elenore says, clapping her hands together excitedly. “Seventieth anniversary. Platinium. Zero pressure.”

She produces a list of fifteen novels, complete with blurbs and handwritten notes, and passes it to Harry.

“This is a shortlist, we’re still only doing five this time. But we thought it would be best to let the artists pick from something a little broader than back in oh-seven,” she explains, picking up a biro and clicking it absently.

Harry scans the names on the list. All famous classics, of course. He spots _1984_ , which he figures is apropos of the times, along with _The Great Gatsby_ and _Emma_. Then his eyes and heart stop, and Harry raises a hand to smile politely behind the cover of his fingers. Elenore stops clicking her pen. For one indulgent minute where he pretends to keep reading, he pictures his Galatea, youthful and impetuous. Eternally young to Harry’s fifty-six years, always, always what? Thirty, thirty-five years behind. In whatever is left of Harry’s eternity he never sees him age, forever handsomely lovely and young.

“I have always had a boyish fondness for Wilde,” Harry confesses, his lips still quirked up in a smile, and Elenore smiles conspiratorially at him.

She is well-behaved enough not to ask for details and first ideas, and hand-delivers the thick, final contract he will send to Merlin to be reviewed before signing it himself. They talk delivery dates and the necessity to send work-in-progress updates, and to whom. Elenore is well-behaved but not to the point that she doesn’t lean in to ask, near the end of their meeting, in a hushed tone, _Feel free to send_ me _updates, yeah?_ before rising to shake his hand.

Harry takes a cab straight to the Bethnal Green studio and makes the driver stop on Brick Lane, a few streets before Saint Matthew’s Row, at the first bookshop he sees. He emerges five minutes later with the novel safely tucked under his arm, and leaves through it imprudently the whole walk to the studio. There, he sits at the small desk tucked in a corner and reads and thinks of impetuous boys and foolish painters.

For the next few days, Harry reads and draws, tries to make Galatea’s face haunty and dainty instead of angry and defiant. By the end of Saturday, the desk is covered in sad, crumpled balls of paper and pencil shavings; the book itself is dog-eared and covered in smudged fingerprints and tiny handwritten scribbles. The three empty tea-stained mugs sitting on the desk have Harry’s full handprint in grey graphite on the side.

Harry goes home, stares at the still-open sketchbook, and goes to sleep.

When morning comes he wakes early, showers, shaves, gets dressed, and goes on autopilot to the kitchen to fix himself a cup of tea. Absently, Harry presses the _play_ button on the ansaphone, and looks up blearily from his tea when an automated voice announces, _You have no new messages_.

The microwave cheerily flashes _7:56_ at him. A few seconds of thinking remind Harry that it’s a Sunday, and that technically, no one expects him to be working today. For a minute, Harry debates going back to bed. Then he takes the teabag out of his cup, and adds a spoonful of sugar, a squeeze of lemon, and a cloud of milk.

Harry is in the middle of his first piece of toast when the phone rings. Startled for a second, he lets the ansaphone take over.

It’s a Sunday, the thirteenth of November.

_“Hey, it’s me. Uh, hopefully this is Harry Hart? I’m up shit creek, I’m at Holborn Police Station-”_

“This is Harry Hart,” Harry says after a mad dash to the other side of the room to pick up the phone, embarrassingly breathless. There is no mistaking the voice, the accent. _Galatea?_ he wants to ask. His last figments of sanity stop him.

_“We met in Kensington and Camden?”_ the boy says, somewhat hesitantly, hushed.

“I remember,” Harry says dazedly. “You mentioned something about Holborn?”

_“Ah_ ,” he replies, humourlessly. _“Yeah. That job offer still good? I said I had a job and all. Could you bail me out? You can take it from my pay.”_

“I’ll come pick you up,” Harry says. “Do I need to bring a lawyer?” Merlin would kill him if he phoned before nine on a Sunday.

_“I dunno. Fuck, do I need a lawyer?”_

The boy is starting to sound a little hysterical. “Just hang on, I’ll deal with this mess.” Harry goes to hang up, then catches himself. “Wait,” he says loudly, feeling foolish, “what is your name?”

There’s a silence at the other end of the line, then:

_“Liam Parker.”_

Harry is out the door and into a cab in record time. It’s early enough in the day that the car reaches Holborn in twenty minutes. On the way there he sits very still, back ramrod straight. He’d put on a suit this morning, he realises. This might only help at this point.

Inside the police station there are few people - some of last night’s partiers that got up to no good, or that had no good get up to them, slowly coming down from whatever poison they’d picked for their Saturday evening out. Some look up to stare curiously at Harry, and fast enough, a young policeman walks up to him.

“Can I help you, sir?”

“Perharps,” Harry says, making himself taller, his back straighter, his smile innocent. “I am looking for Liam Parker? He called me sounding quite frightened.”

“ _Oh._ Yeah, I was the one that took him in.” The man lowers his head and his voice. “Look, I just wanted to give him a bit of a scare, yeah? He only had a joint on him, no record, but you know how it is. We just give them marijuana warnings and a talk and two months later they’re back here. I’ve got two brothers, I know how it is for my parents.”

Harry feels his panic deflate like a balloon.

“What happened, exactly?” Harry asks blankly, following the man when he starts to walk away, down a fluorescent-lit corridor.

“Dogs sniffed him out late last night. Was a bit pissed, this one. Just bent down and pet the dog and handed us the joint. Agreed to be searched, had nothing else on him. Said a mate gave it to him. He seems like a good lad,” the man answers, stopping in front of a door. “Always a shame to see them going down the wrong path.”

“It is,” Harry agrees faintly. He watches the policeman turn the door handle like he’s opening the lid to Pandora’s box, and steps inside with him silently.

On an uncomfortable-looking metal chair, his Galatea, _Liam,_ looks up blearily. As soon as he registers Harry’s presence, he shoots out of his seat, head down. It’s such a contrast to their previous encounters that Harry takes a step back.

“Mr Hart, I’m sorry to make you come fetch me like that,” Liam apologises. He looks so different, eyes cast downward, brows knit in concern and shame, fists clenched at his sides. “My mate gave me the joint, wasn’t even planning on smoking it, swear down.”

“I hope you realise how lucky you are,” the policeman says in a low, angry voice, “anyone else, they’d have canned you for this. And you’re lucky to have a boss like that. He could have just told you to toss off and fired you.”

“Just a mistake, I’m sure,” Harry says, smiling wryly at the officer. Liam does not look up. “I trust it won’t happen again.”

Afterwards, Liam is given a crisp form informing him that his so-far clean record holds a marijuana warning for the year to come. The policeman makes him sign it, but waves off Harry’s concerns of lawyers and bail.

When they exit the station, the sky is blank again, and so is Liam’s face. They stay silent for a few paces, Liam still clutching the warning in his hand. They’ve started walking towards the Russell Square tube station, Harry notices, and he clears his throat.

“Liam, would you like a lift home?”

“Oh, yeah, that,” Liam says, balling up the notice and tossing it in a bin, “that’s not my real name.” He throws Harry a sideways glance. “Was convincing, wasn’t it? Shame about the spliff, though.”

“Why did you call me?” Harry asks blankly. He’s beginning to guess pretty much the whole morning was an act.

“Couldn’t exactly call me mum now, could I? My stepdad would have killed me. Or my mates. Coppers would have laughed in their faces, I thought they’d like the whole suit and tie look instead.”

“A little gratitude would be nice,” Harry remarks drily. Near the Great Ormond Street hospital, he spots a cab and strides towards it. “Climb in. I’m taking you home.”

Liam - not _Liam_ , then, back to his anonymous Galatea - stays silent the whole drive, and it’s not exactly a short one. It takes nearly a half hour to reach South Hampstead, and when they reach the address the boy had given, he palms his pockets with a frown while Harry gets his wallet out.

“Come on then,” the lad says, “at least let me buy you a pint.”

So the address he had given the cabbie is not his home but his local, apparently. It’s barely ten, but when the boy knocks on the window, the curtain shifts and a man squints at them, rolling his eyes and opening the door. Harry is itching for a stiff cuppa or, preferably, a full hand more than fingers of whiskey, but all he asks for a Guinness when his Galatea inquires. The scratched tables are sticky with ale, and the place is silent but for the rhythmic whisper of the barkeeper’s broom against the old wooden floors and the clinking of last night’s glasses as he gathers them. The mid-morning light is filtering through the windows and crowning his Galatea in light amongst flecks of floating dust.

Harry’s fingers twitch for a pencil once, twice, before he closes them around his glass.

“What is your name, then?” he asks, finally, if only to occupy the silence. The boy looks at him, slouched on the bench.

“Eggsy.”

Harry waits for a beat, studying him. His arms are crossed tightly over his chest, his bottom lip sucked inside his mouth. Foster had painted models looking away from him, arms crossed like this, the features of their faces hazy but their disinterest obvious. Through the grimy glass of the window and the dirty, yellowed lace of the curtains the light thrown on his skin is almost golden. 

“Your real name.”

“S’what people call me, innit?” he says, taking a drink of his pint of ale.

“Is this a common occurrence for you?” Harry asks, ignoring the whole name matter for now. “Finding yourself in police stations.”

Eggsy - he’ll go with Eggsy, for now - sits up a bit straighter at that, his whole body going tense.

“I’ve got light enough fingers, and I usually run faster than the coppers,” he says tightly, “didn’t really want to go home last night.”

Harry doesn’t know what to answer to that. He studies Eggsy’s face, his fiery eyes, the tight line of his mouth. He wears every emotion on his face, Harry notices. Granted, he’s only seen the boy angry, but the little performance back at the station was pretty convincing.

“You kept my card,” he says, raising his glass and swirling the stout around for a bit before he takes a sip.

“Guess I did.”

“Why don’t you accept my offer?” Harry says, staring at Eggsy. “You said you did not want to call your mother to pick you up from the police station. It seems to me that she would be bitterly disappointed in the choices you have made so far in life, and I think you know that, too.”

Eggsy gives him a disbelieving, unkind sort of smile and leans back.

“You can’t talk to me like that,” he says, almost cockily.

“I am giving you an opportunity to turn things around,” Harry needles on. “From what you have told me, your curriculum vitae’s highest points seem to be drugs and petty crime. Do you attend university? Have you even ever had a real job?

“You think there's a lot of jobs going around here, do you?” Eggsy spits out. “That we can all even afford to go to school? You was probably born with trust funds, like all the posh wankers who clutch their bags and pat their pockets if I stand too close on the tube? The snobby lot of you, judging people like me from your ivory towers, with no thought about why we do what we do,” he goes on, properly fired up now. It’s a good look on him. “We ain't got much choice. You get me? And if we was born with the same silver spoon up our arses, we'd do just as well as you. If not, better.”

_I do not doubt that_ , Harry wants to say, and the door opens.

A pack of men walk in, their permanent-looking frowns turning into outright scowls when they spot Eggsy.

“What the fuck you doing here?” one of them asks, taking a few threatening steps. “You taking the piss?”

“Some more examples of young men who simply need a silver suppository?” Harry quips despite himself, glancing at Eggsy. He has risen from his seat, head low.

  
“No, they're exceptions. Come on.”

“Nonsense,” Harry says calmly. “We haven't finished our drinks.”

“Told you last night I didn’t wanna see you there, Muggsy,” the apparent leader says, leaning towards Eggsy. “Dean knows you was talking to coppers last night. Said you didn’t come home, and you knows what happens if you don’t keep your gob shut, innit? Or maybe you could use a bit of a reminder?”

“Listen, boys,” Harry hears himself say, “I've had a rather eventful morning. So whatever your beef with Eggsy is, and I'm sure it's well-founded,” he continues with a glance at Eggsy, “I'd appreciate it enormously, if you could just leave us in peace until I finish this lovely pint of Guinness,” he finishes with a nod towards his pint.

The men glance between them, amused. Eggsy rolls his eyes. Harry forces a small smile on his lips.

  
“You should get out of the way, Granddad,” the man says, slowly, “or you'll get hurt and all.”

“He ain't joking,” Eggsy breathes. “You should go.”

Harry rises. The small crowd parts for him, and he spares Eggsy one last, long look - his face pale, his eyes big and worried - before walking away.

“If you're looking for another rent boy,” one of the goons calls out, “they're on the corner of Smith street.”

A smattering of laughs follows the remark, and Harry stops. In another universe, maybe he would fight back. Teach them a lesson. Earn Eggsy’s respect. In this one, his hands have not done much for the past thirty years except holding pencils and paintbrushes; he has not lifted anything much heavier than canvases in decades. In this one, Harry should probably walk out.

In this universe though, Harry Hart is fifty-six; according to his lawyer, he is having himself a midlife crisis, and there is a discarded pint glass on a table by the door.

It doesn’t turn out to be much of a lesson.

He throws a few punches, thinks of his fingers and switches to inelegantly kicking, and tries to give as good as he gets. There is a satisfying cut on the leader’s forehead from the glass Harry has smashed into his head, though, and Eggsy is staring at him with something like admiration as Harry presses a bag of frozen peas to his jaw in the middle of the Tesco Express they’d ran to after the barkeeper had picked up the phone and threatened to phone the police, _Dean or not, you lot need to take it elsewhere,_ he’d said, _I got a pub to open in one hour._

“Didn’t think you’d do that,” Eggsy says. There’s a bruise blossoming on his cheekbone, and a sharp little cut on his lip. He smiles and winces a little, tongue poking out to prod at the cut. Harry presses the bag harder against his jaw. They are starting to get looks from shoppers, so he walks towards the self-checkouts.

“Neither did I,” he mutters, taking the bag off his face to scan it. He still feels a little out of breath from running. He throws the peas in the bagging area and starts fishing through his pockets for a few coins. Eggsy huffs out what could be either a sigh or a laugh and leans in front of Harry to throw a quid in the machine. “Thank you.”

“Yeah, well, I kinda still owe you for the thing at the station, innit?” Eggsy says as they walk out.

Harry puts the bag to his jaw again and studies him, the elegant curves of his neck and his ears, his short-cropped hair. He has three little moles under his left ear, Harry notices.

“I’ll have to expense you the seventy pence on your first paycheque, then,” Harry says.

Eggsy stops and turns to stare at him.

“Never properly said I was gonna do it, guv,” he says.

“No,” Harry concedes. “ _I_ said you were.”

Eggsy stares some more, and Harry holds his gaze, on a Sunday morning standing on a kerb in South Hampstead with a shiner and a bag of Tesco Value Petit Pois on his face. It’s cold and damp, and Harry’s fingers are starting to go numb from the frozen peas. The smile that has been playing at Eggsy’s lips for the past fifteen minutes finally breaks out before turning into a smirk.

“A’ight, then,” Eggsy exclaims, “like one of your French girls.”

“No, Eggsy,” Harry says, and he hides his own smile behind his bag of frozen peas. Then, after a beat, “Tell me your real name.” Eggsy gives him a disbelieving sort of moue. “I have an employment contract to draft up with my lawyer.”

Eggsy rolls his eyes and shifts on his feet, rolling his neck and staring at Harry. He holds out his hand.

“Gary Unwin,” he says. “But really, it’s Eggsy.”

Harry smiles, lowers his peas, and shakes Eggsy’s hand.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A now-cold cuppa and [_The Day Dream_](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b1/Dante_Gabriel_Rossetti_-_The_Day_Dream_-_Google_Art_Project.jpg) by Dante Gabriel Rossetti, on view at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, or as Rossetti said, " _[It] will be beyond question as good a thing as I ever did_ ". Fun fact: I originally intended for Harry to be a Pre-Raphaelite (as much as anyone would be in the twenty-first century, at least) and then remembered my eternal fondness for Sargent. 
> 
> If you'd rather have a look at more modern things, [Harry's studio in Bethnal Green](http://www.rightmove.co.uk/property-for-sale/property-58668884.html).
> 
> Harry Hart, you have no chill. I shall adore you always.

Eggsy takes him to a chippie where Harry metaphorically throws the Benecol and eats coronation chicken and chips until both his lips and fingers are greasy with it. He gets Eggsy’s number and fills him in on what sitting for an artist actually means as Eggsy nods and wipes his greasy, vinegar-soaked fingers over his jeans. His hand is still sticky when Harry shakes it, and he stays a long time watching him walk away until he disappears around a corner.

Harry goes home, washes his hands, and picks up the sketchbook and pencil again.

Around five he takes a break for tea and rings Merlin. He seems a little irritated at being called on a Sunday, and two seconds into their conversation Harry hears the unmistakable sound of cigarette paper catching fire and the hiss of Merlin exhaling smoke over the receiver.

“Didn’t I tell you to toss off to France?” he sighs, and Harry leans over his sketchbook to darken the three little beauty marks dotted over the side Eggsy’s neck.

“This is a purely professional call,” Harry replies. There had been the tiniest blemish on Eggsy’s jaw, and he pencil it in. “I need you to write up an employment contract for me.”

He hears the shuffling of papers, the click-clack of fingers of a keyboard, and goes over the curve of Eggsy’s ears.

“You know people usually do that themselves, right?”

“Well. You know how I am with contracts.”

There’s a long silence on the other end of the line, interrupted only when Merlin huffs out what seems to be a particularly long cloud of smoke.

“How is ten o’clock tomorrow, sir?” Merlin asks, impossibly proper, and Harry laughs as soon as he has hung up.

He finishes his tea before he phones Eggsy.

When he picks up, Harry hears nothing but rustling for a few seconds, then muffled conversation. For a moment he thinks the lad might have accidentally picked up, then something shifts and he hears more clearly, a tinny, angry voice with the echo of a speakerphone

“ _I could kill you right now, and no one in the whole world would notice_.”

All the blood in Harry’s body goes cold. He looks down at the sketchbook, the three little moles and the small blemish.

“But I would,” he says.

“ _What the fuck_ ,” someone - the angry voice - spits out, followed by more rustling.

The call cuts off.

Harry sits silently, staring at his phone. He has no idea where Eggsy lives exactly, no address to give the police or to run to himself. He stares at the screen numbly, feeling like someone dropped a pint of ice down the back of his shirt.

He nearly jumps when the phone rings, and fumbles to answer it.

“ _Harry?_ ” Eggsy says, sounding out of breath and harried.

“Eggsy,” he sighs, his whole body sagging. “What was that? Are you alright?”

“ _Yeah, that was my stepdad. Harry, meet Dean; Dean, fuck off and die, you wanker.”_

Harry can hear traffic behind him, the rush of a train passing by, the loud sound of Eggsy’s rough breathing.

“ _Did you need something?_ ” Eggsy asks, bless him.

“Are you alright?” Harry repeats, and there’s a noncommittal noise at the other end of the line. He sighs. “Meet me at the studio I told you about.”

“ _Alright_ ,” Eggsy says after a pause, and he hangs up.

It takes Harry over thirty minutes to catch a cab and get there, his cup abandoned on the table along with the sketchbook. Eggsy is already waiting in front of the building, his neck craned up towards the small Juliet balcony. His head whips around when the cab screeches to a halt, and Harry nearly recoils when he sees the large red mark marring Eggsy’s cheek, right under the purplish one on his cheekbone.

“What happened?” he asks, leaning in to examine Eggsy’s face.

“Should have kept those peas, innit?” Eggsy smirks, taking a step back. “This is inconvenient for you, I’m guessing.”

“I’m not a photographer.”

“Thank fuck for small favours,” Eggsy quips, and Harry shakes his head as he unlocks the door.

Once up the stairs and inside the studio, Harry makes a beeline for the small refrigerator. There’s an ice cube tray in the freezer, and he pops them out into a tea towel and hands it to Eggsy. The boy is looking around the studio curiously, and Harry turns some of the lights on before going in the bathroom.

In the mirror, his own bruised jaw is still red, but Harry barely spares it a glance. He finds a bottle of tea tree oil and gives it to Eggsy before turning the kettle on.

“Put some on the bruising,” Harry instructs him when he keeps staring dumbly at the glass bottle, “then back to icing. Ten minutes on, ten minutes off. How do you drink your tea?”

“Milk and honey, if you got any,” Eggsy answers faintly, rubbing the oil gingerly on his tender face.

Harry does find a small jar of honey in a cupboard. When he hands it to Eggsy, he scrunches up his nose.

“That ain’t honey.”

Despite himself, Harry checks the label.

“Yorkshire honey,” he reads. It has crystallised a little, but he remembers his nan saying honey never expired. He looks back at Eggsy, who manages to still look regal with an expression of suspiciousness and a tea towel filled with ice on his face.

“It’s white,” Eggsy says slowly, like he’s talking to a small child. “Are you sure it ain’t gone bad?”

“This is proper honey,” Harry says after a sudden realisation, turning back to the kettle and pouring water over teabag in two mugs. “Try it. You will like it.” He adds a teaspoon of lemon juice to his own mug, then clouds both teas with milk.

When Harry hands Eggsy his cup, he stares at it for a bit, eyes darting between the jar of honey almost suspiciously. He does wear every emotion on his face, and his entire face scrunches up when he takes a careful sip of tea after spooning some honey into it.

“That ain’t honey,” he declares with a wince, but he follows when Harry goes to sit at his painting stool. Eggsy tucks his makeshift icepack between his jaw and his shoulder and fumbles to drag the desk chair over. Some of his tea sloshes over the rim and splashes over his fist. When he sits, he raises his hand to his mouth and licks it with a loud sucking noise. 

Harry looks away.

“Now that I have allowed you to derail me with a conversation about honey of all things,” he says, idly staring at the signet ring at his finger and the glint of it in the lowlight, “are you going to tell me what happened?”

Eggsy looks at him, chin tilted up, putting the tea towel down.

“Nah.”

“Eggsy-”

“This don’t concern you, alright?” Eggsy tells him, getting up and walking around the small studio, staring at the shelf of paints and brushes and blank canvases, all neatly arranged in rows. He nods towards the desk, setting his mug down and pinging at a balled-up sketch. “What you working on?”

“Something I’ll need your help with, actually,” Harry says, walking towards the desk. “Have you heard of the Penguin Classics designer classics?”

Eggsy gives him a blank look.

“Penguin Classics was founded in 1937,” Harry explains. “In 2007, for their diamond anniversary, they put out limited editions of five books designed by artists. Next year is the platinum anniversary, and I have been asked to paint the cover art for one of the novels.”

“That’s a big deal, innit?” Eggsy asks. He looks down at the desk and picks up the novel Harry had left there the day before. It feels like it had been ages ago. “Is that the one?”

“Yes.” Harry hesitates before adding, “Have you read it?”

Eggsy shakes his head, turning the book over to look at the blurb on the back.

“Should I?”

“It wouldn’t hurt,” Harry says, “if only for the fact that it’s a classic, as well as a brilliant read.”

“Why do you need my help? You need me to sit for the painting you’se gonna be doing, right?” Eggsy asks, looking at Harry with his eyebrow raised. “Because I haven’t read this, but from what I gathered he’s a posh bloke, and I’m just a pleb.”

Harry takes a step back to look at Eggsy properly, with his bruised face and his still-split lip and his polo shirt under the same Letterman-style jacket. He looks at Eggsy’s green eyes, the curve of his nose, the sharp lines of his jaw and cheekbones.

“This is not what that is about,” he says finally, and he puts a guiding hand on Eggsy’s shoulder. “Come with me.”

Under the sloped roof, next to a battered couch and opposite the largest set of window, he had put a mirror to check himself in for paint stains. He stops in front of it and meets the reflection of Eggsy’s eyes.

“What do you see?” he asks.

“Someone who wants to know what the fuck is going on,” Eggsy says impatiently.

“I see a square jaw,” Harry begins, “Schiele accentuated the jaw of his models, or his own in self-portraits. Eyes as Rossetti painted, down to the unimpressed look you are giving me right now.” Eggsy smiles, just a little quirk of the lips. “Mona Lisa’s smile was similar, too, though perhaps this comparison is a little bit too overdone. Rossetti’s work is also particularly recognisable by the pouts his subjects sport. Your nose could have been painted by Leyendecker - he favoured this gentle sort of slope. If you are familiar with Sterrer, your back and shoulders-”

“Bruv, I ain’t familiar with any of these blokes,” Eggsy interrupts. “This all very flattering, I’m guessing. M’afraid I don’t well see the point, though.”

“The point is, Eggsy, that your lack of a silver spoon has little to do when it comes to this kind of work.”

Eggsy cheekily raises one eyebrow at him.

“Sitting for a painting?”

“Well,” Harry says, and he clears his throat. “Have you seen the film _The Girl with a Pearl Earring_?” Eggsy makes a noncommittal noise. “How about _Cashback_?” he adds hesitantly, and Eggsy shakes his head. “ _Love is the Devil_?” Harry says, feeling a little desperate. Eggsy gives him an exasperated sort of look. “My point is, Eggsy, that being the subject of a painting has little to do with upbringing. Of course, Desnos was quite taken Yvonne George, who was quite famous in her time, and Lisa del Giocondo lived a comfortable life, but many artists have been inspired by models that were, shall we say, lower class. Kiki de Montparnasse was a bastard child and left school quite early, but she is still considered one of the most important muses in modern history-”

“Like in the old _Moulin Rouge_ from the fifties,” Eggsy interrupts suddenly.

Something warm spreads in Harry’s chest. He recalls briefly of Toulouse-Lautrec his _The Bed_ series, the intimate cabaret scenes, the warm explosions of colours, the indecence.

“Well,” he says at last. “You’re full of surprises. Yes, like the old _Moulin Rouge_.”

“That what you want from me?” Eggsy asks, a glint in his eye. “You looking for a muse?”

He turns his head, just barely, to look at Harry more comfortably through the mirror, and Harry catches a glimpse of the three little moles under his ear.

_Not quite looking anymore_ , Harry thinks, almost wistfully. Eggsy’s eyes are comfortably half-lidded now, his posture more relaxed, his lips red from the hot tea and his shoulders a soft slope under his jacket. He tips his chin up again, half challenging and half demanding. There is another beauty mark there, Harry notices, smack in the middle of his throat.

“Of sorts,” he answers finally. “Interested?”

“You think I’ve got anything to lose?” Eggsy says before turning back towards him.

Harry takes a step back. Night has fallen by now, and the lights he had turned on are not quite enough to see properly, but just enough to bathe Eggsy in a golden, intimate light. He longs to see him in the sun, a luster of gold painted in Eggsy’s hair, his eyelashes dragged in lengthy shadows down his cheeks by the light. For now it will have to do to simply watch him under the artificial lights of the studio.

Eggsy starts looking around again, raising a hand to touch the spines of the sketchbooks lined in a shelf or the smooth surface of an empty paint-stained jar Harry keeps for watercolours. It is not his preferred medium, but he thinks he would quite like to have Eggsy sit to try and capture the exact shade of green (almost blue under this light but not _quite_ ) of his eyes.

“So,” Eggsy says, as if on cue, “you draw me now?”

The thought is tempting. Of course it is. Harry has spent almost two weeks now bent over sketchbooks and scrap paper trying to cobble together something that looked as much as Eggsy as he could - not that the lad knows. He would like nothing more than to sit Eggsy under the brightest lights he owns and draw until his fingers ached. His face was different now - open, welcoming, inviting; whereas before it had been angry and closed, staring up at Harry from the paper like he scolded Harry for daring to draw him.

“No, Eggsy”, he says. It’s quite possible the hardest thing he has ever had to say no to. “Officially, you do not work for me -I have a meeting with my lawyer on the subject tomorrow, to draw up your employment contract, and we still need to discuss the matter of wages.”

Eggsy gives him a derisive sort of snort and an incredulous look. He takes a few steps towards Harry and sits on the desk chair he’d rolled in front of Harry’s stool.

“Harry,” he begins, slowly, “no one will know.”

And, well.

Harry can only be so strong.

In under a minute he has his suit jacket and signet ring thrown carelessly on his desk and a sketchbook on his lap, his main lights turned on, a pencil in his hands and his eyes on Eggsy. The boy is fidgeting a little, which is to be expected - crossing and recrossing his legs, raising his hand to scratch the side of his nose, bouncing his knee nervously. As soon as the sound of pencil scratching paper starts to fill the room he goes still, though, legs spread and hands joined over his lap, his face impassive and impervious.

His jaw, first, a lovely square thing made of straight lines with the barest hint of stubble that goes above his lip, too. _Lips_ , with a fraction of it sucked into his mouth at the corner. Harry can imagine him nibbling at the inside of his bottom lip nervously. He hesitates before drawing the small line of the split, barely-there on the soft-looking flesh. Eggsy has some small, pale moles on his cheeks, almost like errant, lost freckles. Where did they wander from? The length of his arms or the curves of his shoulders? Down the column of his neck Eggsy is wearing a polo shirt again, the collar high but not high enough to hide the prominent beauty mark on his throat now that Harry knows where to look for it. He sketches a few lines for the jacket, not willing to linger when he could be drawing the soft curves of Eggsy’s ears, the little pinch of skin at the top of the right one, the velvety-looking lobes.

Shading is necessary if only for the pleasure of highlighting the tip of Eggsy’s nose with a few careful passes of a fine rubber, and the smallest snort Eggsy makes when Harry bends towards his sketchbook to blow gently on the paper to chase the shavings away. He darkens the bruised areas by rubbing the lead of his pencil and gently brushing the paper, as carefully as he would brush Eggsy’s injured skin.

Harry has sketched out the general shape of Eggsy’s eyes along with the rest of him as first, but he takes his time staring before he draws the lines of the narrow eyes, a brush of his pencil for the short upper lashes and then again for the longer bottom ones. He takes the rubber again to highlight the whites of Eggsy’s eyes and over his pupil.

Eggsy sits still and unblinking.

Short, small strokes for the eyebrows, still frowning a little, crowns of defiance over Eggsy’s unreadable eyes. His hair then, flattened by the cap he had been wearing earlier but wild, the haircut outgrown a little. A few more freckles by his hairline, wanderers again, wanderers from…

Harry clears his throat and swiftly turns the page over, dropping his eyes to Eggsy’s hands and starting to sketch, short fingers crossing over each other-

“Give us a look, then,” Eggsy says, and Harry stills. “Wouldn’t work for a baker without tasting the bread.”

Straightening, Harry turns the page back and hands the sketchbook to Eggsy with little ceremony, watching warily as the boy stares. This is his life’s work. He draws and paints people for a living. He should not feel nervous. Eggsy is silent for a long time. Harry can see his eyes moving, roving over the paper, over himself. He looks down at his own hands, covered in graphite.

Then, slowly, almost imperceptibly, a small smile lifts up the corners of Eggsy’s lips.

“Flattery won’t get you nowhere, Harry,” he says at last, staring into Harry’s eyes with shining ones to match his pleased smirk. “I’ve already said yes.”


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Let's start with Indian takeaway and [_Emilio Bassi_](http://i.imgur.com/L18OHIO.jpg) by John Singer Sargent.
> 
> Next chapter, the two people in Harry Hart's life who go by nicknames finally meet.

On Monday morning Harry wakes feeling like death warmed over after sleeping for four hours. He had drawn Eggsy until his eyelids were heavy and his dirty hands were leaving more graphite on the paper than his pencil. It was the lad who had decided to put a stop to the impromptu session after Harry refused several times, getting up and putting his jacket back on, moving about the studio until Harry gave up on trying to sketch him. After he had stuffed cab fare in Eggsy’s hands Harry had taken a cab of his own, straight home to blearily shower the morning’s fight and the evening’s graphite off himself before promptly faceplanting on his bed.

When he drags himself to the bathroom, he has bags under his squinting, bloodshot eyes, and a smear of dried up drool on his chin. _You are fifty-six_ , he thinks as he splashes cold water over his face. _You gave up all-nighters twenty years ago. Why are you doing this to yourself?_

The familiar routine of tea, lemon, sugar and milk and the droning of the ansaphone does him in, and Harry just about kips down on the backseat during the cab ride over to Merlin’s office just off Chancery Lane.

Thirty years ago he had looked up the pristine Stone Buildings emerging from the greenery of Lincoln’s Inn Fields and felt something like awe, clad in his brand new suit courtesy of Chester King and resolutely, impressively young. So was Merlin back then - a freshly qualified solicitor with an already-receding hairline and a strong Scottish accent that had not yet been smoothed out. Nowadays Harry knows the white brick buildings and the streets and small courtyards surrounding them like the back of his hand.

The front desk people all look up and nod at him in concert after he is buzzed inside the building. Harry hurries towards the lift and heads towards the fourth floor - _Leigham, MacKay, Rose, Solicitors -_ before glancing at his watch. It’s five past ten.

“Harry, late as usual, sir,” Merlin says from where he is standing next to his office’s door, clipboard tucked under his arm. The secretary gives Harry a sly look under his eyelashes, eyes laughing when his mouth can’t.

“Good morning, Mr Hart,” he says around a simpering smile.

“Pipe down, Hugo.”

Harry gives the boy a tight-lipped smile as he walks past him, following Merlin into his office. The soft clacking of fingers against a keyboard resumes before quieting when Merlin shuts the door, blocking out the sound.

“You look like shit,” Merlin tells him, gesturing to the seat in front of his desk before sitting down himself, taking a long sip from a cup sitting on his desk.

“Late night working, I am afraid,” Harry explains before taking a sip of his own cup of tea, already waiting in front of him. 

Merlin gives him a long, considering look over the rim of his cup.

“Alone, obviously,” he says, pushing a few papers out of the way to lay down his clipboard. “Not while no contract has been signed yet by any prospective model.”

Harry sips his tea quietly.

“Why are you asking for a contract, anyway?” Merlin asks with a frown. “I am surprised their agency did not provide a contract of their own. Have you been answering Gumtree classifieds again?”

“Not in so many words,” Harry answers.

Thirty years ago, maybe he would have squirmed under Merlin’s dark, dark eyes, lined with tight little skin folds and crowned by a deep wrinkle between his eyebrows, present even back then. Twenty years ago even - when they had both just settled into their lives and into their rapport. Fifteen, ten, five years ago he would have done what he does now and smiled simply, almost impishly.

People rarely say _no_ to Harry Hart.

“His name is Gary Unwin,” he begins, “although he goes by Eggsy, I rather doubt it is in any official manner. He will be modeling for me for the Penguin Classics cover, which is due, I am afraid, in six months.”

And just like this, Merlin is all business again, penciling notes in the margins of the contract he had outlined on paper before turning to his computer. Work contracts are not especially complicated - Merlin had said so himself.

“Hours as needed, I imagine,” Merlin says, not quite expecting an answer. Harry nods nonetheless. “I reckon life models usually earn ten to fifteen pounds an hour, but we are not operating on a by-the-hour basis.”

“How much can I afford to pay him?” Harry asks before he can school the words out of his mouth.

Merlin looks at him for a moment before pushing his glasses up on his forehead, leaning back into his chair. He picks up his cup again and takes a long drink.

“Is this about that midlife crisis again?” Merlin asks finally after a long drink of his tea. “What happened to picking up a tart card?”

“It isn’t like this,” Harry says. “I am not trying to bribe him or pay for any services other than him modeling for me.”

They stare at each other for a moment. Harry knows Merlin has a gallery of other faceless and nameless clients, and for a second he wonders what they ask of him, and what Merlin does and does not do. On Merlin’s desk or anywhere in his office there are no pictures of the two little MacKays Merlin and his wife brought into the world twenty-some years ago.

Merlin visibly relaxes.

“Good,” he says, and Harry feels a little surge of affection for him.

They finish drafting the contract, and Merlin’s secretary brings Harry two printed copies.

“Take him there to sign it, if you’d rather,” Merlin offers. “I’ll make sure he reads it.”

“So will I”, Harry says, and he remembers something. “The other day,” he starts, “did you get my message?”

“Yes,” Merlin answers after a beat. “Yes, I got your message. But I am afraid what ensued is confidential.”

Harry thinks for a second, and smiles. He nods at Merlin when he shakes his hand before leaving, both contracts under his arm in a nondescript manilla envelope.

Part of Harry wants to immediately call Eggsy and schedule an appointment to formally hand in the contract. The other part of him chides the first.

It’s cold outside, the air painfully dry. Instead of walking towards Chancery Lane again, Harry turns towards the park. Lincoln’s Inn Fields are empty save for a few students rapidly crossing towards the Hunteran with steaming paper cups in hand or various dogs followed by their hurried and harried owners. Harry walks leisurely down the manicured pathways, eyes up towards the leafless trees. The space is lovely in the summer, with its greenery shadowing large benches and vast expanses of grass welcoming tourists and summer students to lay down. He wonders if Eggsy has ever been there. The neighbourhood is mostly populated by lawyers and students, but he had been taken to the Holborn police station, hadn’t he? Where from?

Harry walks to High Holborn to catch a cab, and stops in the middle of the kerb, in front of a nearby Costa. A woman almost bumps into him and tuts loudly. He apologises distractedly and instead of looking for a cab, he turns and walks the fifteen minutes to Cornelissen’s.

The shop has not changed in the past thirty years either, the bright green shopfront still beckoning Harry towards it. The staff know him by name, and they smile when he comes in. It’s almost noon by now, and the shop is quiet. Harry takes his time walking around, taking in the familiar woody scent of paper, the ever-present smells of graphite and paint and clay and ink. Idly, he swipes his fingertip over the black lacquer of the shelves lining the walls as he walks past.

Harry does not actually need anything, if he’s honest with himself. Nonetheless…

He buys amongst other things new pencils, a large sketchbook with creamy white paper, a new palette, hog and mongoose brushes, two ten-packs of oil blocks and, when he walks past the almost-overwhelming offerings of oil paints, a tube of Michael Harding paint in Italian Green Umber.

The salesgirl almost laughs at him when he tells her he _might_ have gone a bit overboard.

The cabbie eyes him dubiously when he loads his bulging bags into the backseat of the car and asks him if he’s going to get any paint on the seats. Harry stares back and adjusts his tie silently.

Back at the studio, everything is as he’d left it - an assortment of mugs on the desk, several of them his and one that Eggsy had drunk from. He tidies up, closes the abandoned sketchbook now bearing dozens of sketches of Eggsy after an almost-fond look at them and washes all of the mugs. He could have sworn he had left his signet ring at the studio, but figures he must have put it back on to take it off at home and forgotten to slide it back on his finger in his bleary state this morning. He can’t find the novel either, though, even after a wild look around with the certainty that he had not taken it home - and it occurs to him that Eggsy probably took it. Presumably to read it.

Harry can’t bring himself be mad about the fact.

When he goes to make himself something for lunch, his freezer is devoid of its usual ready-meals. On his way to the shop Harry stops by the bookstore and acquires a new copy of the novel. He can’t tell if the salesperson is the same as last week. He hopes not. On the way back he stops at Sainsbury’s, loads his basket with his usual frozen curries and risottos, and guiltily puts a few lean meals in the mix.

On his way towards the checkouts, he breezes past the spreads at first, but takes a few step back to drop a squeeze bottle of clear honey in his basket.

He eats his Weight Watchers’ lasagne without tasting it and makes himself a cuppa. Harry has just poured the boiling water over the bag when the intercom buzzes insistently. He’s not used to visitors in the studio, and he startles a little.

It’s Eggsy, of course.

“I thought I’d drop by,” he grins. “Are you busy?”

“Well,” Harry starts, pulling a second mug out of the cupboard. “I needed to see you, actually.” When Eggsy makes a questioning sound, he continues. “I have your work contract. I need you to look it over, and my lawyer is prepared to have you sign it in his presence.”

“Is that necessary?” Eggsy asks with a frown, accepting the cup of tea wordlessly. “I mean, I’ve worked at Tesco before and they made me sign shit in the manager’s office, no lawyers or nothing.”

“A precaution,” Harry says mildly, and he pours milk in his and Eggsy’s mug.

He had left the honey on the countertop, and he pushes it towards Eggsy silently, watching the boy’s eyebrows shoot up in surprise and some sort of delight. He says nothing.

Leaving Eggsy to fix his own cup, Harry retrieves one copy of the contract and hands it to him.

“S’all standard, yeah?” Eggsy asks, glancing at the paper. It’s pretty short, all things considered, two pages, with a third one detailing a non-disclosure agreement regarding Harry’s work for Penguin Classics. “You got a pen?”

“Read it,” Harry says firmly. Eggsy looks at him suspiciously. “There’s nothing untoward, I assure you, but it is good practice to always read something before you sign it.”

“Fuck,” Eggsy whistles, “who screwed you over?”

“My first boss, if you must know.”

Eggsy’s eyebrows shoot up. 

“Shut up.”

Harry sits down at his desk, turning to study Eggsy when he lets himself fall on the decrepit couch.

“How old are you, Eggsy?”

“Twenty-four.”

“I was just a bit older than you, then,” Harry says with a wry smile. It’s not a story he particularly likes to tell, but he wagers Eggsy could use the cautionary tale. “I did not pay attention to what the terms of my contract meant, and signed over exclusivity rights as well as a hefty percentage of my earnings through his gallery. I did not have a lawyer back then, and by the time I did, he had my career in his hands,” he finishes.

Eggsy looks at him, then back down at the contract in his hands.

“I’ll read this, then,” he says with a frown. “S’just for a year?”

“The project I need you for is due in six months,” Harry explains. “I would rather have you, let’s say, at hand for the next six ones until the edition comes out, just in case.”

Eggsy nods. Harry gets up quietly, fishing out the sketchbook and a pencil from his bag of purchases from Cornelissen and Son. He settles back down and flips open the sketchbook on his knee, sketching quickly the shape of Eggsy’s head, the studious frown pinching his brow as he reads, his clenched jaw and pursed lips.

He barely has the time to flesh out the curves of Eggsy’s ear when the lad looks up sharply.

“That’s for the whole year, right, Harry?” he exclaims. “You can’t pay me this much. It’s just sitting.”

Harry sets his pencil down on the desk next to him.

“There are no fixed hours,” he says carefully, “I will require your presence for long and frequent stretches of time.”

Eggsy is shaking his head, his cheeks red.

“I ain’t charity,” he spits out. “I don’t need your bloody money.”

“Neither do I,” Harry says. “Eggsy, this is going to be full-time work.”

“This ain’t seven quid an hour, Harry.”

“Well. I guess we can discuss any alterations with my lawyer.”

Harry hates to play it like this, but he sees Eggsy stop short. The boy closes his mouth, still frowning, his cheeks still red. He needs the money. Harry can see that.

“It’s fine,” Eggsy says quietly, at last.

He settles back down and Harry takes his pencil again and finishes working on Eggsy’s ear. He is wearing the same hoodie as last night, and that’s when Harry realises he’s wearing the same clothes, down to his polo shirt. Harry can see a speck of blood on his collar.

“You have blood on your collar.”

“Yeah,” Eggsy says, “I know. Didn’t get a chance to change.”

Harry pencils in the small dried-up drops.

“Didn’t really go home last night.”

He stops and looks up from the sketchbook with a start. Eggsy’s eyes are still fixed on the contract, unmoving.

“Where did you spend the night?”

“Kipped down on a friend’s sofa.”

“Are you planning on going back home any time soon?” Harry asks, idly shading the underside of Eggsy’s jaw, dark with stubble.

“Not really.”

“Where are you planning on staying?”

Eggsy shrugs, taking a sip of his tepid tea before crossing his arms. Harry draws the shape of his adam’s apple, the mole over it.

“I have a spare room,” he tells the sketchbook before he can think better, and when he looks up Eggsy is staring at him with an attractive frown.

“Is that an offer?”

“Yes,” Harry says, because it is. “Honestly, I would feel more comfortable keeping you until the wee hours of morning if I knew you would sleep somewhere safe.”

Eggsy keeps staring at him, his face twisted into something unreadable. Harry lifts an eyebrow.

“Eccentric posh bastard,” Eggsy mumbles.

Harry smiles and goes back to drawing the little cowlick right behind Eggsy’s ear.

It only hits him what a mad idea it is when he is unlocking his front door that evening, Eggsy fidgeting right behind him.

“Drawing room is on this side, kitchen through the dining room,” Harry recites. “This door is the loo, and upstairs you’ll find the bath, next to the spare room you will be staying in. Are you hungry?”

Eggsy nods dumbly, looking around curiously. Harry busies himself with ordering takeaway for the both of them. It feels strange to hear someone else move around his house. He needs a drink.

When he goes to the drawing room after pouring two glasses of scotch, he sees Eggsy standing next to the side table next to the couch. His fingers are holding onto the corner of the page of the sketchbook still sitting there. Harry swallows and hands him one of the glasses wordlessly before taking a long sip of his.

“ _Galatea_?” Eggsy asks.

His expression is soft, open, curious. Down on the sketchbook he is angry, outraged, his brows and mouth a pinch, his eyes angry. There are details missing, looking back, something just a little bit off in Harry’s rendition.

“Pygmalion and Galatea,” Harry says.

“Like in _My Fair Lady_?”

“In a way. In Greek mythology, Pygmalion was a sculptor, and shaped Galatea out of marble. He found his work so perfect that he wished for her to come to life, and she did,” he explains. “But it was an inspiration for the play _My Fair Lady_ is based on, yes.”

Eggsy looks at him for a very long time. Harry tightens his hold on his glass. Somewhere behind Eggsy the clock keeps ticking. A car zips by outside the mews, a dog barks. If it weren’t for it all Harry would be sure that time has stopped.

“You fucking freak,” Eggsy says, but there’s no heat in it. He smiles, a soft, almost fond little thing.

Harry takes a long, long drink, and lets Eggsy laugh.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It probably is Saturday somewhere, right? Alaska, perhaps?
> 
> For this week, fresh mint tea and [a 1919 ad](http://i.imgur.com/4b2CqC7.jpg) by Leyendecker.
> 
> There are two hundred and eighty humans following this fic! This is the maddest feeling of them all. Many thank yous to all of you, for all your kudos and comments. If you want to chat at me, I have a [tumblr](http://sircolinfilth.tumblr.com), because the anon asking system finally did me in, where I will probably never post much apart from writing notes, maybe, because those are hilarious.

On Tuesday morning Harry wakes, showers, gets dressed, and looks for his ring half-heartedly before making his way down the stairs. He’s on the landing when he smells tea and toast and stops short before remembering Eggsy’s presence in his house.

It takes him a few seconds to climb down the last set of stairs and walk hesitantly into the kitchen.

“Morning, Harry,” Eggsy tells him, easy as they please, spreading jam on a piece of toast before biting into it. “Made you tea, but I think I cocked it up.”

“Don’t talk with your mouth full,” Harry chides absently. “You made me tea?”

Eggsy hums and jerks his head towards the cup sitting on the counter. It’s a pale, translucent orange, speckled with floating bits of white.

“Water, lemon, sugar, milk,” Harry recites, pouring the cup out in the sink and rinsing it, “or else the lemon will make the milk curdle.”

There’s crumbs all over his kitchen table, and a smear of jam on Eggsy’s cheek. He busies himself with making another cup of tea.

“Someone rang, by the way. Merlin? I think your machine picked it up.”

Harry nods absently and strides towards the ansaphone. Sure enough there’s a message from Merlin, as well as the usual fare of reminders and requests from his agent, Chester, and a small assortment of journalists. While his tea brews he phones those back to reroute them towards his agent, ignores the messages from Chester, and rings Merlin.

“Leigham, MacKay, Rose, solicitors at Stone Buildings, how can I help you?”

“Hugo, this is Harry Hart. May I speak to Mr MacKay, please?”

From the kitchen sounds a small, derisive snort. Harry clears his throat.

“MacKay.”

“Merlin, it’s me,” he says. “I got your message, and yes, I’d rather Mr Unwin sees you in person, if you’re free anytime soon.”

“Stop by around two this afternoon,” Merlin answers, amongst the sounds of paper being shuffled around. “Two o’clock, precisely.”

“Of course,” Harry assures him. Merlin just sighs at him before hanging up.

When he returns to the kitchen, lemon, sugar and milk have been added to his tea. He throws Eggsy an appreciative look. The lad gives him a wink, raising a piece of toast in cheers. He’s reading, the book folded in half in one of his hands.

“Don’t get jam on my book,” Harry warns, helping himself to a slice of toast. He gets up to get his Benecol from the fridge, and stares at it for a moment before sighing and grabbing it anyway. “What do you think?”

“Pretty good, yeah,” Eggsy says around a mouthful of toast. “So who’s Merlin?”

“My lawyer.”

“Your lawyer’s called _Merlin_?”

“And my model is called Eggsy,” Harry tells him. “We’re off to see him this afternoon to get your contract signed.”

Eggsy nods, his eyes fixed on the book, chewing his toast absently. He’s gone and eaten half the bloody loaf of whole-wheat bread, and a good chunk of a jar of Harry’s favourite organic blackberry jam. His feet are propped up on a chair. Despite Harry’s warning, there is jam on the spine of the book, and he’d wager he would find breadcrumbs between the pages if he looked. Eggsy is a walking nightmare, and he’s _perfect_.

Harry has not shared living space with anyone since public school forty years ago. He’s made of routines and rituals. He wonders if the past twelve hours bode well for the future, or if this is the calm before the storm. He wonders if maybe it should occur to him that perhaps Eggsy might return home soon, or find new accommodations.

“How long are you planning on staying?”

Eggsy looks at him and lowers the book slowly.

“Am I really being that annoying?” he asks, looking down at the spoils of his breakfast on the table. He wrinkles his nose and turns his eyes back on Harry. In the muted, greyish light of the kitchen his hair has lost its golden hue and his skin looks milky, starkly white pale against the vivid red of the jam still on his cheek.

“No. Not at all.” Harry longs for a pencil, if only to occupy his hands. “You can stay as long as you want.” When Eggsy, with his face like an open book, looks absurdly delighted, Harry coughs around a sip of tea. “You’ll need to go fetch some things, though, I assume.”

“Oh. Yeah, probably.” Eggsy sniffs at his armpit with a frown in a gesture so terribly _boyish_ that Harry feels the corners of his lips lifting despite himself. “I probably smell pretty rank.”

“I’ll take you,” Harry says. “We could go now, if you’d like.”

He can _see_ Eggsy think. His eyebrows are knit together, his eyes staring at some point behind Harry’s head, his fingers moving rapidly like he’s counting.

“Yeah,” he says, finally, “yeah, that should work.”

So they go - Harry calls for a cab and lets Eggsy give his address, somewhere in South Hampstead not too far from the pub he’d taken him to. Eggsy chats aimlessly the whole drive, growing steadily quieter as they head south, until he’s quiet and sullen when they reach the estates off Rowley Way.

“Stay in the car,” he says tersely. “I won’t be long.”

Harry remains in the car with the meter running and watches him stride quickly through the estates, through doors and up stairs and down pathways until he disappears. It’s barely ten in the morning and the buildings are quiet. Even the gaggles of assorted men and women grouped there and there sitting on benches or leaning against walls are silent, conversing in low tones amongst themselves.

“He is not doing nothing illegal, right?” the cabbie asks, staring at Harry in the rearview mirror. “I don’t want no trouble.”

“Just getting a few things,” Harry assures him. When the cabbie keeps staring, Harry sighs and hands him a crisp twenty-pound note.

It’s a few more tense minutes until Eggsy comes back running, clutching handfuls of bulging shopping bags from Poundland and Sainsbury’s and sporting a brand new bruise on his cheek. The cabbie makes a unhappy noise in the back of his throat and mutters something in Urdu. A beer bottle smashes on the floor a few metres behind Eggsy, and Harry dives for the door handle as the boy all but throws himself at the car.

“Fucking _drive,_ ” Eggsy hisses. The cabbie swears.

“You said nothing illegal!” he tells Harry, but he drives off anyway.

“What the fuck is he on about?” Eggsy asks Harry.

“What on earth happened up there?” Harry fires back.

They all talk over each other, and the quietness that follows is almost deafening. The cabbie slows down once they fall on Finchley road.

“My stepdad was home,” Eggsy says quietly before knocking on the glass pane separating them from the driver. “And it ain’t nothing illegal bruv, really, swear down. Just clothes and shit I got from my own bedroom.”

“I believe you,” the cabbie says, albeit begrudgingly. “Where do you go now?”

“Home,” Harry groans, rubbing his hand over his face. “Back to Kensington, please.”

Harry ends up paying an obscenely large fare to the cabbie. Eggsy is silent as he waits for Harry to unlock the door, looking remarkably out of place in the quiet, picturesque cul de sac with his overflowing plastic bags. He shuffles inside quietly when Harry holds the door open for him, and toes off his trainers before nodding towards the stairs.

“I’ll go wash up.”

“Eggsy,” Harry calls after him.

He freezes on the third step, turning half his body towards Harry. _Open book_ , Harry thinks again. His entire face is pinched up, like he’s been sucking on sour drops. A blush is covering up the new bruise and the older ones; born from anger, shame, or both.

“You’ve got jam on your cheek,” he says finally, pointing at the spot on his own face. “Right here.”

The spot has dried tacky and pink. Eggsy swipes ineffectively at his cheek before nodding and turning back to trudge up the stairs to the guest room. Harry hears some rustling, and minutes later, the sound of the shower coming on. He still hasn’t moved from the foyer, Harry realises belatedly. He needs a drink. Scotch is probably not well recommended for elevenses, so he has a finger of port instead, standing in his drawing room.

On the side table the sketchbook sits untouched - even the cleaner who comes in twice a week hadn’t touched it, despite a lack of instructions regarding the matter. It feels a little bit like resignation when Harry sinks down on the sofa and lays the sketchbook on his knee to sketch Eggsy’s downturned eyes as he reads, his dirty sleep-tousled hair, the breadcrumbs on his chin, and the spot of blackberry jam on his cheek.

Harry is in the middle of drawing a more detailed sketch of Eggsy’s hand holding the book this morning, sticky fingers pressed tight against the cover, when he hears a floorboard creak close to him. He turns his head, just a little, to see Eggsy leaning over the back of the sofa, staring at the sketchbook intently. He’s washed up, his skin a bit flushed from the hot water of the shower, his hair clean and wet. He smells nice, like Harry’s soap and shampoo and something vaguely citrusy, probably a cheap deodorant he’d grabbed back home. Eggsy is wearing clean clothes as well, a tracksuit jacket over another polo shirt and jeans. Harry still longs to see him in a suit.

“I’ll go make us some lunch, yeah?” Eggsy says softly.

Then all Harry can hear are the noises of the lad in the kitchen - the fridge opening and closing, cupboards slamming shut, the metallic noises of utensils and pots or pans, water rushing, something sizzling. He closes the sketchbook and sets it back on the side table before approaching the kitchen warily. He knows how to cook, but he rarely cooks anymore, beyond putting frozen ready meals in the microwave or in the oven.

“Spag bol,” Eggsy announces when Harry clears his throat behind him. “You had a jar of sauce in your cupboard.”

It’s nothing homemade, really, nothing really fresh either. With the state of his kitchen, Harry wasn’t really expecting beef Wellington. He’s sort of amazed the boy even found spaghetti.

“Your kitchen’s in a right state, by the way,” Eggsy tells him while Harry looks on dazedly. “You need to go for a proper shop soon.”

“If needs must,” Harry says.

The sauce tastes a bit too much like tinned tomatoes and the beef is nonexistent at best, but Harry still gets out a bottle of Barolo and two crystal wine glasses that Eggsy snorts at.

It’s all so _domestic_. Three bites in Eggsy has a smear of sauce on his chin and orange lips from the dye in the sauce. Something in Harry’s belly aches. He blames it on the acidity of the low-grade tomato paste and takes another glass of wine.

“You kinda drink a lot, Harry,” Eggsy tells him as they clean up.

“I am a painter,” Harry says grandly. “It is in my contract. Speaking of,” he adds with a glance at the wall clock. “The meeting with my solicitor is at two. Let’s go do a bit of a shop beforehand, shall we?”

“ _Yes,_ Harry,” Eggsy groans. “If even me’s laughing at your freezer, you have to.”

In for a penny, in for a pound, Harry figures when Eggsy hands him a plate to put in the dishwasher, suds trickling down his wrists from when he’d rinsed the plate in the sink. At this point, they might as well do the whole shebang. It gets worse when they file into Waitrose and Eggsy walks next to the trolley as Harry pushes it, pointing out half-price apples and rolling his eyes when Harry wrinkles his nose at the small sour fruits and asks for the organic Pink Lady ones instead. It almost feels like bickering, for a second, before Eggsy puts Harry’s apples in the trolley anyway and they move on.

The boy reaches automatically for the lower shelves, the value items, looks at the prices while Harry takes what looks good and puts things in the trolley after only a cursory glance at the nutritional value. He had guessed the boy did not come from the richest home soon enough, but it’s another thing that to realise it in Waitrose while he watches Eggsy hesitate between two jars of blackcurrant jam.

“Do you want the lowered sugar one?” Eggsy asks with a sly look at Harry.

“Of course not, that’s swill,” Harry answers evenly. “Get a jar of Wilkin’s rhubarb jam, would you?”

“So’s your fucking marg.”

“Wait until your cholesterol starts spiking,” Harry warns him.

When they reach the dairy aisle, Eggsy puts a stick of British salted butter in the trolley with a lot more ceremony than strictly necessary. Harry retaliates by replacing the cheap honey by an organic, Scottish one.

“S’just honey, Harry,” Eggsy tells him when he does.

“Eggsy, please. I am merely trying to live vicariously through you.”

When they finally go back home, the kitchen holds more food than it ever has. It feels strange to open the fridge and not find it empty anymore, only to look up and find Eggsy arranging boxes and packets of biscuits in a cupboard next to Harry’s teas.

Harry thought again of the sketchbook on his end table, Pygmalion and his perfect Galatea gaining life and stepping into his reality.

The eeriness remains all through the drive to Merlin’s office, not too far from Holborn. The coincidence only accentuates the strangeness of it all, of Eggsy sitting next to him in the back of a cab heading towards a very familiar part of Harry’s life less than a mile from where he’d picked Eggsy up only two days ago. 

They get to Merlin’s office at seven past two. As he did yesterday, he’s waiting for Harry in his office’s doorway, under Hugo’s watchful and amused eye. Eggsy shakes Merlin’s hand stiffly, his back ramrod straight and his face pale. It occurs to Harry that perhaps not all of Eggsy’s encounters with lawyers and solicitors may have happened in his favour, or with his interest in mind. He claps Eggsy on the shoulder reassuringly as they sit down. Eggsy’s contract is sitting on the desk, the exact copy of the one he had given Eggsy. Still, Merlin invites him to peruse the contract quickly to look for any mistakes or differences, which Eggsy does with a frown pinching his brow.

“Yeah, good,” he says a bit tightly.

“Was there anything you wanted to discuss regarding some of the terms?” Merlin asks after a glance up.

“No, just…” Eggsy falters a little, looks at Harry with the corner of his eye. “The pay thing. That’s not normal, innit? That’s a lot, and I’ve been staying at yours, you have to let me help with rent or lower it.”

“Nonsense, I own the house. I will not waver on the matters of wages, this is a non-negotiable.”

Eggsy looks down with his jaw clenched for a minute before nodding stiffly. Merlin raised his eyebrows almost imperceptibly at Harry before producing a pen and handing it to Harry. He signs and initials twice and slides the two copies of the contract towards Eggsy.

“If you agree with my client’s terms, Mr Unwin,” Merlin says, and Eggsy nods again and signs. It all has a bit more pomp and flair than any work contract signing actually deserves, but the rituality of it all is almost soothing. “How old are you, Eggsy?” Merlin asks in a more casual voice as he slides both contracts in thick manilla envelopes.

“Twenty-four,” he answers, looking a bit more relaxed himself once everything is done for.

“I have a son your age,” Merlin says after a sharp glance at Harry. “My youngest, actually,” he adds conversationally. Harry hates him.

“Yeah? Named Gandalf?” Eggsy’s smile only widens when Merlin glares at him. “Seriously, what kind of lawyer is called _Merlin_? What’s your real name anyway?How come you know mine and I don’t know yours?”

They stare at each other for a few seconds before Merlin opens a drawer and takes out a business card, handing it to Eggsy.

“If you can read it, come over here and whisper it in my ear.” he says, “You can call me that.”

Eggsy’s eyes are darting between the card and Merlin’s face, and Harry hides his smile behind his hand. He knows the trick - saw Merlin execute it a few times himself. Eggys frowns and flounders at the card for a moment.

“Merlin’s a fine name,” Eggsy announces finally, shoving the card in his pocket. Merlin quirks a smile as he raises to escort them out.

Once outside Harry hails a cab as soon as he spots one, and turns to Eggsy after climbing in.

“Do we need to stop by the house?” Harry asks. Eggsy shakes his head. “St Matthew’s Row, please,” he tells the cabbie.

Time seems to drag before he has Eggsy sitting in his polo shirt and socks on a stool facing his, doused in the greyish light pouring in from the largest set of windows. Harry turns his lights on and off before settling on a bright, cold-toned one aimed at Eggsy’s face and sharpening his features, making every angle and cut of his cheekbones and jaw look dangerous. When he gets his Polaroid out and takes a shot of Eggsy in position, he lowers the camera to find Eggsy laughing at him.

“Harry, it’s the twenty-first century,” he says. “Use your phone.” As if to demonstrate, he takes his out of his pocket and aims it at his own face, tapping the screen and turning it towards Harry. “Same thing, less weird.”

“And I’m sure you’ll be perfectly fine with me putting your phone on the easel, or even on the canvas?” Harry says as he selects a few tubes and an oil block. “I am an old-fashioned man, Eggsy.”

“Better than just old,” Eggsy says, and his smile stretches a bit wider before falling, his face going back to the cold impervious stare Harry had photographed. He sets the polaroid under the corner of the block, tucked between it and his knee. “Bit about how you paint in a suit. Who the fuck does that?”

“I have sets of painting clothes somewhere,” Harry says distractedly. He mixes in some blue in his grey and a healthy amount of black and starts on his background, somewhat hurriedly - this is the rough equivalent of a sketch, a preliminary step. He wants to focus on the foreground, on Eggsy and Dorian and Galatea.

“And you can’t spare a minute to put them on?” Eggsy asks, not unkindly. The warmth in his voice is in stark contrast with the expression of disinterest and near-disdain on his face, not Eggsy’s own expression, not really.

Harry doesn’t say anything.

It probably turns out to be enough of an answer.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This week, a litre of lemonade and a [self-portrait](http://i.imgur.com/AyZNrDX.jpg) circa 1837 by Eugene Delacroix. And, you will see why later: _[Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose](http://i.imgur.com/KMqOiG1.jpg)_ by John Singer Sargent, 1886. 
> 
> I've been posting snippets on [tumblr](http://sircolinfilth.tumblr.com) this week, which is rather fun, to be honest. As always, thank you to all of you for your sweet comments and your support. You have no idea how overjoyed it makes me to see what you lot think of this story.

Over the next few days Harry paints enough that another trip to Cornelissen and Son is necessary for more oil blocks. Half of the floor space of the studio is covered with drying oil sketches. When Eggsy sits unmoving at his stool he looks like a prince on his throne, surrounded by offerings or the spoils of a battle.

He takes Eggsy with him to Cornelissen’s, and there’s something almost eerie about seeing him in the shop where Harry has been a patron since his late teens, before Eggsy was even an idea in his parents’ mind. It feels queer to have Eggsy walking amongst the black shelves of paints and pencils; Galatea moving about a marble quarry. Harry has never been much of a sculptor - he had done some work in Camberwell that he’d rather forget about - but he finds himself longing for a place to immortalise the shape of Eggsy’s jaw and the curves of his lips.

Statues have no colour, though.

The bruises on Eggsy’s face heal little by little, until his skin is pale and unmarred. Every last sketch starts with a dark background, because Dorian is born of darkness and because Eggsy’s healed skin is pure marble in contrast to it. It makes him look regal, delicate as porcelain but no less strong. 

Staring back at Harry from the blocks his eyes are purely Dorian’s, though, cold and sure, the green a touch too blue to be truly Eggsy. Sometimes Harry looks up from his work and finds _Eggsy_ looking back, eyes soft and a little hazy. Then he orders a break and Eggsy files away to make tea; lemon, sugar, and milk. Sometimes Eggsy sprawls out on the couch and reads with honey-sticky fingers from Harry’s copy of the novel. Sometimes he looks over the sea of oil blocks, and asks Harry about them, what’s wrong with them, why aren’t they good enough. Sometimes he takes Harry’s camera and takes pictures; Harry sitting at his stool with his cuppa, Harry finishing the curve of one eyelash, Harry frowning at the novel and at his own notes, Harry looking at him over the bulk of the camera.

“Aren’t they all kinds of expensive?” Eggsy asks one evening, shaking the picture in his hand and slowly revealing Harry’s eyes looking up questioningly over the top of his easel. “The Polaroid things.”

“I don’t mind,” Harry says, and he paints a pinkish glaze over Dorian’s cheeks.

One afternoon he shows Eggsy how to load the film in the Polaroid and leaves him to it to go make tea. When he comes back Eggsy is laying on his back on the floor amongst the sea of oil blocks, shaking a picture in his hand. Soon enough they resume the session, but when he tidies up at the end Harry finds the picture abandoned on the desk on a small, messy pile of photographs. Eggsy had turned the camera on himself and captured his own face surrounded by Harry’s sketches, so close to the model but not entirely _right_.

The next time they’re in the studio, Harry brings a box of thumbtacks and posts the picture on an empty wall, then a few others, all arranged in a neat row, bright and slightly blurry. Eggsy watches him do it without a word, but takes a picture of the wall when Harry goes to change.

When November comes to a close Harry places an order for a canvas and throws away the vast majority of the sketches without any ceremony. Eggsy looks at him a little strangely when he does, but doesn’t say anything. One morning, Harry takes him to the V&A to show him what the people wore near the end of the nineteenth century, and spends the entirety of their visit making Eggsy stand next to clothes to sketch Dorian in them.

Afterwards Harry treats him to a proper fry-up to Floris and talks about his masters and lowers his voice to confess that, despite being American, Sargent is still, to him, the finest painter. He takes Eggsy to the Tate Britain and forces himself to stay silent as Eggsy stares at _Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose._

“I have a sister,” Eggsy says at last. “Her name is Daisy.”

Harry says nothing, but he buys Eggsy a postcard of the painting as they leave, and watches him stare at it for a long minute before tucking it inside his jacket.

He learns just a bit more about Eggsy’s family three days after that, after a long day at the studio painting nothing but Eggsy’s hair, golden like a summered field of wheat at sunset. They are sitting in Harry’s drawing room in the evening afterwards, with each three fingers of whiskey in hand and an order for Chinese takeaway placed over the phone.

“Why _Eggsy_?” Harry asks before he can stop himself, and Eggsy looks up from his tumbler - the liquor is the same colour as his hair, Harry notices, in the lowlight of the parlour with only the table lamps on. The sketchbook is still waiting on the side table, and he leans over to grab it, along with the pencil sitting next to it.

“Why what?” Eggsy asks blearily.

“Why do we call you Eggsy?” Harry elaborates. He sketches short, fluid lines for Eggsy’s hair and long, winding ones for the languid shape of his exhausted body.

“My mum is called Michelle,” he says, not moving, not when the sound of Harry’s pencilworking over paper is filling the room. “There’s this Beatles song, yeah? _Michelle, ma belle,_ ” he sings it, hesitantly. Harry nods. “My dad used to sing it to her all the time, when I was little, and I got jealous because I didn’t have a song for me. My dad, he loved the Beatles. He was from Liverpool. You know _I am the walrus_?”

“I do,” Harry says. He wishes for colour now, for something to show the whiskey blush on Eggsy’s cheekbones.

“There’s this bit in it, _I am the eggman_ , yeah?” Eggsy smiles, then, and Harry corrects his sketch. “It’s fucking inappropriate for kids, but I _loved_ that song. So he called me Eggman, and eventually that turned into Eggsy. It’s a nickname of a nickname. It’s a bit stupid.”

His whole body goes soft and fond when he tells Harry the story, his mind years away.

“It really isn’t,” Harry tells him.

Eggsy quirks a bit of a smile at him and takes a swallow of his whisky, wincing as it goes down. Just like that, Galatea escaped straight from the warmth of Leyendecker’s pictures is Eggsy again, sitting on Harry’s sofa with his socked feet up on the armrest, squinting against the burn of the alcohol, his entire face scrunched up with it.

“That is _rank_ , Harry,” he says.

“ _That_ is a Lagavulin 37 you just took a swig of as if it were a vulgar Ballantine’s,” Harry sniffs.

Eggsy laughs at him openly.

It feels so simple and easy being around him - no stakes, no traps, no politics, just this brilliant, lovely boy and his brutal honesty regarding everything under the sun from Harry’s quirks and habits to the workings of society. When Chester phones to tell him about a private viewing of a new exhibition at a gallery in Pimlico in mid-December, Harry’s first instinct is to invite Eggsy along.

“Is it proper?” he asks, tossing pasta in cheese sauce. “I’m just a pleb.”

“Nonsense,” Harry tells him. “Art had nothing to do with status.”

Eggsy gives him a dubious look.

“I need a suit and stuff, yeah?” he says, turning back to the stove. “I’ll pop into Primark or something.”

Harry bristles at the idea. He’s seen what Eggsy wears - poorly cut clothes over a few sportswear brand items. It’s not that he doesn’t trust the lad to dress himself, it’s that he doesn’t trust off-the-peg suits to _dress_ Eggsy best.

“I will take you to my tailor,” Harry tells him, and he slips out of the room to ring the shop and make an appointment.

If the sight of Eggsy in Cornelissen’s was strange, nothing could have prepared Harry to seeing him at Kingsman, looking curiously at the pictures adorning the walls.

“That’s yours, innit?” he asks, pointing at a portrait of one of the old tailors sitting behind his desk, done in ink and faded green over the years.

“Well done,” Harry tells him. Eggsy smiles at the praise and points at the 1993 sketch of both Jameses. Harry nods, and before he can elaborate, a deep voice sounds behind them.

“I ought to take it down,” Percival says, eyes smiling. “Harry Hart,” he greets him. “Always a pleasure.”

“Percival,” Harry smiles. He shakes his hand before turning to Eggsy, indicating the boy with a broad sweep of his hand. “This is Eggsy Unwin.”

“ _Percival_?” Eggsy blurts out, shaking his hand.

“ _Eggsy_?” Percival answers in a pointed tone. At least Eggsy has the decency to blush.

“Don’t you know anyone with a proper name?” he hisses at Harry when Percival slips away to get a fitting room ready. 

“His full name is James Percival Joyce,” Harry explains tersely. “The other head tailor at Kingsman is also named James. It makes things easier.”

“Shut _up_ ,” Eggsy tells him, head whipping around to face Harry. “Ain’t no way anyone called their kid _James Joyce_.”

“You’ve never read Oscar Wilde but you’ve read James Joyce?” Harry asks curiously. 

Eggsy doesn’t have the time to answer before James strides in - Spencer, not Joyce - and stops short in front of them, hands clasped together in front of him and smiling already. Eggsy takes a half-step back, and Harry doesn’t blame him. Where Percival is sometimes polite to the point of seeming taciturn, James is enthusiastically charming, somewhat aggressively so.

“Well,” he says, all velvety tones, “I thought I heard a familiar voice. Harry Hart, I trust all is well,” James adds, shaking Harry’s hand. “And who might this be?” he asks, extending a hand towards Eggsy.

“Eggsy Unwin,” the lad says before Harry can do the honours. “I’m his model.”

“I see,” James says.

Harry wonders what he sees, exactly.

“Quit bothering the clientele, James,” Percival says, appearing behind him. “Fitting room one is available, sirs.”

Harry hesitates before following Percival and Eggsy inside, if only to escape James’ scrutiny.

Eggsy fidgets uncomfortably through the whole process, his eyebrows shooting up when Percival drops down on one knee in front of him to measure his inseam. He mumbles unintelligibly when Percival asks which side he dresses on, studiously avoiding Harry’s gaze and even his own reflection in the mirror.

“What were you thinking for the cut and style?” Percival asks, jotting down numbers. 

It takes one questioning look from Eggsy and an expectant one from Percival before Harry realises the question was addressed to him in the first place. He clears his throat.

“A few weeks back, you had a double-breasted suit in semi-wide navy pinstripes in the shop’s window,” Harry says. Percival nods and Eggsy frowns. “I think it will do nicely.”

When they exit the dressing room, James is still on the main floor, along with another tailor and two shopkeepers. They do not outright stare, but all fall silent when Percival comes out followed by Eggsy and him.

“Gentlemen,” Harry greets them.

There’s a murmur of answers. Eggsy is fidgeting next to Harry, obviously uncomfortable with the attention. James’ lips are pursed in an uneasy little gesture, even though Harry _knows_ he was probably the one to alert his colleagues that Harry Hart was here with a young man in tow.

“Do we need anything else?” Percival asks lightly. “Shoes, perhaps?” He turns a dark look on James before focusing on Harry. “If you’d like to show Mr Unwin to the showroom.”

Harry does, leading Eggsy with a hand at his elbow. As soon as they come into the showroom, Eggsy sits on a padded bench and groans.

“I apologise for their behaviour, Eggsy,” Harry tells him. “They can be worse than a pack of schoolgirls.”

“They probably think you paid me to be there,” Eggsy mumbles in his hands. “This is fucking mortifying, Harry. Is it gonna be the same at the viewing?”

“I’m sure they don’t think that,” Harry says gently. “I’ve never brought anyone there, they must be surprised.”

Eggsy peers up at him from behind his hands.

“You haven’t?”

Harry shakes his head.

“Okay,” Eggsy says slowly, taking a deep breath before following. “Shoes, right?”

“Ah, yes,” Harry tells him, gesturing at the display in front of them. “You're going to need a pair of shoes to go with your suit. An oxford is any formal shoe with closed lacing,” he explains, pointing at a lovely black almond-toe number, the polished leather gleaming under the shop’s flattering lights. “This additional decorative piece is called broguing,” he adds dismissively. Eggsy quirks half of a smile at him. “Oxfords, not brogues, Eggsy - these are words to live by.”

Eggsy laughs, and laughs, and laughs.

Harry walks him through the rest of the showroom quickly, showing him cigarette cases and lighters, the small array of hip flasks, belt buckles and braces. After a few minutes, Percival slips inside the room discreetly and patiently explains the difference between wearing trainers and formal shoes, recommends the purchase of wool-blend socks, finer than cotton-blend ones. Eggsy looks a little bit overwhelmed, but soldiers on and Harry finds him asking questions, wondering to Percival about the difference between wearing a belt or braces.

When they go back on the main floor, they find it empty again, and Percival leads them to pick out a tie. Eggsy stares at the folded accessories with his mouth half-open, obviously out of his depth. Harry nudges him and points cautiously at a white and red striped silk tie in a similar shade of navy as the suit he’d seen in the shopfront.

“Yeah, good,” Eggsy mumbles.

Percival, bless him and his professionalism, knows better than to name numbers and slips Harry his bill while Eggsy is staring at another of his sketches on the wall near the display of ties.

“I apologise for James’ behaviour, Harry,” he says softly in a low, neutral voice, thumbing absently at the golden band stacked under the signet he wears on his ring finger. “My excuses to your young man as well.”

“He’s not exactly _mine_ ,” Harry tells him with a wry smile, sliding the folded-up bill in the inner pocket of his jacket.

Percival gives Eggsy a few details on the delays to be expected until the first and then second and final fitting, tells him that if all goes well he will be able to leave with the suit on his third visit, or have it delivered at his earlier convenience. When he asks for a phone number to ring to let him know of the progress, Eggsy blinks and glances at Harry.

“Just phone Harry, yeah?” he says, and Percival nods and gives him a firm handshake and his best wishes.

Eggsy is still looking a bit dazed by the time they’re loaded up in a cab and heading to the studio.

“You been coming here a long time, right? The sketches, they were from the nineties.”

“The late eighties, for some,” Harry corrects him. “I first came to Kingsman in 1986. My mentor - my current boss, actually - took me to get a suit before my first exhibition in his gallery. Percival didn’t work there then, he started in 1993.”

“ _Fuck_ ,” Eggsy whistles. “You’re a loyal kind, ain’t you?”

“To a fault,” Harry tells him.

Eggsy gives him a long, considering look before turning to look out the window, shaking his head.

They get sandwiches for lunch at the nearby Pret, and Eggsy bustles in the studio’s kitchenette to make them tea while Harry changes out of his suit and into old, comfortable painting clothes. By now, the studio is a familiar space for Eggsy - he seems at ease here in all the ways he wasn’t at the tailors, looking at the canvas while chewing on his bacon and avocado on whole-wheat with a small pinch in his brow.

Harry watches him take a few steps back and turn around, taking his cell out of his pocket and holding it at arm’s length and taking the expression he wears for the pose, snapping a selfie next to the painting before staring at his screen intently.

“It don’t even look like me,” he says with a frown. “I mean, it does, but it doesn’t, not really.”

“Because it’s not you,” Harry answers. “It’s Dorian.”

Eggsy looks up from his phone and raises his eyebrows.

“Or Galatea, yeah?”

For a second Harry wonders if Eggsy is teasing or mocking him and wants to hide behind his cup of tea, pinned as he is under Eggsy’s expectant gaze.

“Not quite,” he starts, slowly, gathering his words. “Galatea is a representation of artistic perfection. Each artist will describe it differently. But Galatea is an ideal came to life, on paper, on film, on canvas. Both object and muse, cause and consequence of creation, born at the hands of a creator.”

Talking, he comes to stand next to Eggsy, looking at the work in progress, the lack of depth born of the absence of highlights, the painting too dark for now, too flat. Next to him Eggsy is all but - living and breathing with the bright studio lights throwing violent shadows on his neck and under the fan of his eyelashes, dropping light at his cheekbones, the tip of his nose, the curves of his cupid’s bow.

“That’s pretty much it, Harry,” Eggsy tells him. “Me, Dorian, whatever, you made him smooth and polished, with the rings and the clothes and all. Proper.”

Harry looks at Eggsy, at a blemish on his cheek, a tiny scrape on his chin where he’d probably nicked himself with his razor. His lips are greasy with the bacon from his sandwich, his nail beds scratched where he’d nibbled at dry skin.

“No,” he says. “Not quite.”


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A Frappuccino tonight - goes well with yet [_another ad_](https://67.media.tumblr.com/d7514adf30de732a17a535abf4bef332/tumblr_o8mq3looh21vvdm7qo1_1280.jpg) by J. C. Leyendecker. I feel like in his work, you can feel the heaviness and affection with which he gazed at his model, and find it very fitting for this story.
> 
> As of last week, I am on [tumblr](http://sircolinfilth.tumblr.com), doing nothing. Talk at me!

The two weeks leading up to the viewing pass them by quickly. Harry spends his days at the studio painting Dorian and his evenings at home drawing Eggsy.

As promised, Percival calls to arrange the first fitting. On the day of, Harry takes Eggsy and leaves him in Percival’s capable hands while he attends a meeting with his agent a few streets away. He spends an uncomfortable hour listening to Agatha apologise about the current lack of requests and telling him she refused the few interview requests she’d gotten on his behalf. She smiles at him tightly and points out he’ll be able to focus on the painting for the designer cover.

When Harry had relayed his choice of novel to her, she’d pursed her lips in quiet disapproval before perking up at the idea of a classical portrait by Harry Hart -  _ This is your real strength _ , she’d said.  _ That lad from the Guardian was right. What had he said -  _ “old-fashioned, well-loved, academic quality” - she’d quoted.  _ Your art is familiar. This is what people want from you. Something comfortable, something that reminds them of museums.  _

Harry thinks about it as his phone buzzes in the inside pocket of his jacket, right over his ribs like a playful tickle. Agatha looks at him  pointedly every time it does, though he schools his expression into something neutral.

As soon as she lets him go with a remainder of the upcoming date for the pickup of the painting of Eloise, Harry takes his cell out. Out on Clifford Street, he tucks himself under the blue awning of Drake’s. Eggsy doesn’t text him a lot - they spend the vast majority of their time together anyway. In fact, his last text was dated yesterday and just read  _ Did u buy more milk? Im gettin fags at Sainsburys _ , sent as Eggsy was out meeting up with mates. Right after this one, though, there’s a string of texts and pictures.

_ Mr Spencer fed me scotch _ , the first says, and the corner of Harry’s mouth twitches. He pictures Eggsy shiftily letting himself inside the shop after Harry had left him in front of it, James striding in and giving him his usual velvety greeting and offer of refreshments. Eggsy accepting a tumbler of scotch being pressed in his hand, Percival strolling in quickly soon after and giving James a dark look.  _ Not as bad as urs  _ follows, then a selfie of Eggsy raising his glass with a smug, snotty expression on his face.  _ P fuckin stabby  _ introduces a full-body picture of Eggsy, taken in the three-panel mirror of a fitting room. In the corner, Harry can see a blurry hand, the cuff of a dark grey suit. Percival, then.

Eggy looks fantastic in the suit, even though it still does not fit as well as it will after adjustments. As Harry had thought, it makes his legs seem longer, his waist trimmer, his shoulders wider. It hides what it needs to and highlights the squareness of Eggsy’s jaw, the shape of his shoulders, the lines of his thighs.

He hurries towards the shop.

When Harry arrives, Eggsy is out the shop already, leaning against the wrought iron railing in his jeans and polo shirt and that ridiculous Letterman-style jacket. He’s smoking a cigarette, the smoke starkly white and apparent in the cold, damp weather; Westerberg’s Christopher, with his head crowned with smoke like a cloud, his eyes staring at nothing. Harry almost feels guilty stepping closer to him, the way he felt at thirteen visiting the Louvre with his parents and stopping in front of Camille Felix Bellanger’s  _ Abel _ , unable to stop himself from leaning in close until the cordon was digging into his knees.

“Hello,” Harry says. He’s still holding his cell in his hand, and he slips it back inside his jacket quickly.

“Hey,” Eggsy tells him around a cloud of smoke. “All done?” He jerks his head towards the shop. “Do you need to go in and pay your respects or whatever?”

“Not necessarily, no,” Harry smiles. “Did everything go well?”

“Yeah. Joyce, he’s cool. Professional and all, I guess? A bit stiff.”

“That might be because his husband keeps him on his toes at all times,” Harry says without thinking.

“Oh,” Eggsy says, startling.

In the space of one split second, Harry is filled with an overwhelming sentiment of dread. He’s pretty convinced the lad looking him up online, and if he did Eggsy probably knows that Harry is gay, has been out since the late seventies and not always in the most quiet manner. It had never occurred to him that it might be a problem, that Eggsy might have a problem with it.  _ Because of his background?  _ a voice remarks snidely in his head.

“ _ Spencer _ ! Spencer’s his husband, yeah?” Eggsy exclaims, and all of Harry’s worries are put to rest. “They both wear the same rings over their wedding bands, kinda like the one you wear sometimes.” Eggsy stops short after that, his mouth open. Harry laughs.

“You’re a sharp one, Eggsy,” he tells him.

“Yeah,” Eggsy says, blinking at him. He swallows. “Ain’t you ever been married, Harry? Merlin, he’s got kids and all. Not hiding an ex-wife and four kids, are you?” he asks after they’ve found a cab and climbed up into it. His smile is softer, almost mocking. Harry shakes his head. “Ex-husband and four kids?”

“I have a few hundred paintings, if it would please you,” Harry tells him. “But no. Never been married in any sense of the word.” He hesitates before his next question with something small and anxious weighting in his chest. “How about you?”

“Nah,” Eggsy says. “No bird, no bloke, nobody.” He glances at Harry. “Bit busy with my demanding boss.”

Harry feels like laughing all the way to the studio.

He sits in at Eggsy’s final fitting, lounges on the couch which a tumbler of whiskey in hand and watches the door to the fitting room open like red curtains at the theatre. Watches Eggsy step out, all decked out in the now perfect suit and the gleaming oxfords, fidgeting with the knot of his tie. His head is tilted back as he fingers the silk, exposing the pale column of his throat. The collar is high enough that the mole there is hidden, but Harry  _ knows _ .

“What do you think?” Eggsy asks, pulling out his cell and looking at his reflection on the screen.

“Ah,” Harry says. “Yes.” Eggsy gives him a look and Harry drains the rest of his whiskey. It burns on the way down. “You look very handsome.”

The night of the opening, Harry is expecting to see Eggsy in his suit, but not the way his hair has been combed carefully, not quite unlike Harry’s own. It makes Eggsy look statuesque, polished and pale in the navy blue wool, Arrow Collar Man looking down at Harry from the landing. It feels like something out of a film, watching Eggsy come down the stairs, not trudging down noisily as usual but slowly and carefully. He’s managed the cufflinks, but the knot of his tie is a little crooked. Harry hesitates before reaching out and fixing it.

“There,” he says. “Now you look perfect.”

“So what is it, anyway?” Eggsy asks once they’re in a cab, heading towards Pimlico.

“Charlie Hesketh,” Harry explains. “Young artist. Chester King is thinking of featuring some of his works at the gallery.”

The drive is quiet. Harry leans his head against the glass window and turns to stare at Eggsy unabashedly, taking in the way the street lights shift over his face, colouring his skin with furtive spots of green and red. The streets are lit up for Christmas, golden hues reflecting on the highest points of Eggsy’s cheekbones and the tip of his nose like candlelight.

“The painter’s the owner?” Eggsy says with a frown when they get out in front of the Hesketh Gallery, and Harry coughs in his hand.

“His son, actually. Charles Hesketh the first owns the gallery.”

Eggsy gives him a sideways glance and a crooked little smile.

“Nepotism?” he says sweetly.

“Well, let’s see about that, shall we?”

The private viewing is small but lavish, waiters handing out flutes of champagne. The gallery is dark, the lights low but for the spots over the paintings lining the walls. They’re huge canvases, strong colours shaping streets and people, formal portraits of women dressed to the nines and severe-looking men. Quickly, Harry spots a few familiar faces both amongst the subjects and the spectators milling about the gallery.

“Nepotism,” Eggsy says with finality, lifting his flute to his mouth and taking a careful sip. His face scrunches up at the taste. “S’all fucking bland.”

“You’re opinionated,” Harry remarks carefully. It’s not good. Academically, Hesketh follows all the rules. But there’s something undeniably missing from the paintings, a spark of sorts. His grasp of colour is tenuous at best - some of his work is garish, too bright, too strong. Hesketh has obviously spent time working on hyperrealism, but there’s something  _ off _ about his rendition of people, the same difference as between someone real and a wax model.

“Ain’t there any food?” Eggsy mutters, looking around nervously. He frowns when he spots the customary buffet of canapes at the other end of the room. “Why’s no one eating?”

“Painters don’t eat,” Harry explains, matter-of-factly. “I’ll take you to a book release if the occasion presents itself. Writers cannot resist free food.”

The sound of Eggsy’s laughter makes a pleasant warmth flood Harry’s chest. He’s been to his fair share of openings and private viewings, but it’s never quite been like this - the works and the crowd are both dreadfully boring, but Eggsy’s company is excellent, as always.

They make their way through the gallery, Harry explaining some of the academic rules that Hesketh painfully followed, describing who the subject of the painting is or which other works it reminds him of. Next to him Eggsy smirks and murmurs little jokes and snide remarks, mindful of the crowd around them. They get interrupted now and then by someone coming up to them to shake Harry’s hand and glance at Eggsy curiously. After watching some illustrator walk away, Eggsy turns to Harry and cocks an eyebrow at him.

“You’re kind of famous, ain’t you?”

“In a way,” Harry says, looking down at the remaining champagne in his flute. “I have been doing this for a long time,” he starts, before a voice interrupts him.

“Harry Hart,” Charlie Hesketh says. “I have heard a lot about you. Overjoyed to see you here, sir,” he continues, his tone unctuous, his hand stretched out towards Harry.

“Mr Hesketh, my congratulations,” Harry offers with a handshake. “And my best to your father.”

Charlie’s smile gets strained, just for a second, his eyes cold and dark. He turns to Eggsy and looks him up and down. It occurs to Harry suddenly that Charlie  _ might  _ have heard them talking before, earlier - he’s been weaving in and out of the crowd all night, shaking hands and smiling brightly all around.

“Eggsy Unwin,” Eggsy offers, holding out his hand. Charlie doesn’t take it. 

“ _ Eggy _ ? And where did they dig  _ you _ up?” he asks Eggsy derisively. Harry bristles.

“I’m Harry’s model,” Eggsy answers, voice like steel.

“Of course,” Charlie says sweetly. “Of course you are.”

He leaves brusquely with a shake of his head. Next to Harry, Eggsy sighs.

“I’m gonna go have a fag, I’ll see you, yeah?” he says, smiling wrily. Harry nods dumbly and watches him make his way through the crowd and out the door. 

For a second, Harry is ready to follow him, find them a cab, and go home. He sighs and walks amongst his peers and customers, the sea of familiar faces. Then the crowd parts and reveals Chester King, clad in a pristine brown suit.

“Harry,” he tells him emphatically when he spots him. “Glad you could make it.”

“Chester.”

“Interesting work, don’t you think?” he asks before taking a sip of brandy, watching Harry pointedly.

“It’s incredibly jejune and immature,” Harry answers calmly. “But yes, one might consider that  _ interesting _ .”

“Oh, I absolutely agree,” Chester says with a dismissive wave of his hand. “But Charles is an old friend, and well, I believed his son would have something to offer, the way you did all those years ago.” Another sip. Another look. “How is everything? You are working on  _ The Picture of Dorian Gray _ , if I am not mistaken?”

“I am,” Harry says. Looking around, he spots Eggsy weaving through people, walking towards them. He curses internally. “If you’ll excuse me, Chester.” He strides towards Eggsy, putting himself between him and Chester. “Everything alright?” he asks Eggsy.

“Yeah, fine,” Eggsy tells him. “Look, would it be okay if I just left now? I’ll take the tube home.”

“Nonsense, I’ll call us a cab,” Harry replies, palming his suit jacket for his phone. He almost groans when he hears Chester’s voice behind him.

“Leaving so soon, Harry?” Chester’s eyes on Eggsy are heavy, calculating. Appraising. Harry has seen him stare the same way at what he’d dismissed later as unworthy works. His eyes dart between him and Harry. “A protege of yours?”

“My model, actually,” Harry says between gritted teeth. “Eggsy Unwin. Eggsy, this is Chester King, my mentor.”

Eggsy’s eyes go wide, his mouth opening imperceptibly in surprise.

“I see,” Chester says tightly, and once more Harry wonders what it is that everyone seems to  _ see _ . He can feel Eggsy tensing next to him the same way he did that first time at the tailors. “Well. I better go pay Charles my respects.”

As soon as he’s left, Harry sets a hand on Eggsy’s elbow and directs him to the exit, walking at a brisk pace until he spots a cab to take them home. Eggsy is quiet the whole drive home, and when they reach the house, he lingers silently in the hallway, like he can’t decide between going to the guest room he’s been staying in -  _ his _ room, as Harry has come to think of it - or stay downstairs with Harry.

Harry busies himself with making tea, and does his best not to react when Eggsy slips inside the kitchen behind him and sits on a countertop. He’s still wearing his full suit, down to the immaculate oxfords. It’s a strange sight, one that finally makes Harry turn around and stare. The expression on Eggsy’s face is unreadable.

“I apologise once again,” Harry says at last. The kettle starts whistling, and he takes it off the burner and pours water over teabags in two cups.

“Your friends are dicks, Harry,” Eggsy tells him in a flat tone. “And with your boss, it kinda felt like you didn’t want me to meet him. If you’se ashamed of having hired the chav to look pretty for your fancy painting…”

“This is not why I did not want you to meet him,” Harry says slowly. He looks down at the cups on the counter, the water steadily growing darker and darker as the tea brews. “Chester has these ideas, ideals even, about art. Most of the people we met tonight do.” Quietly, he fixes his cup with lemon and sugar before pouring milk in both cups and a squeeze of honey in Eggsy’s. The heels of Eggsy’s oxfords knock against a cupboard door once, a soft, hollow sound. “I am not ashamed of you. I am, whoever, ashamed of Chester King.”

Eggsy quirks a little smile at that, accepting the cup Harry hands to him.

“Why don’t you leave? Do your own thing?” he asks softly.

“Contracts,” Harry begins, “are complicated things. The one I signed all those years ago stipulates that I cannot sell my work to anyone without Chester’s authorisation, or even loan it to galleries without his approval. It was a comfortable situation as I was starting - mainly because I did not believe anyone would  _ want  _ any of my work. Commissions for Chester’s gallery allowed me to have a somewhat steady source of income when I was just only getting started in the art world.”

“But things are different now,” Eggsy says with a frown. “You’re famous. And you’re properly  _ good _ , Harry.”

“I have less offers than you think, Eggsy,” Harry explains slowly. “The vast majority of my work is still paintings to be sold in Chester’s gallery, or portraits commissioned by the elite and I assure you, thoroughly vetoed by both Chester and my agent. What happened with Penguin Classics is that one of their artists had to drop out, hence why I am starting so late. I was not their first choice.”

Eggsy is still frowning. Harry can see that he’s not entirely convinced.

“Your friends are dicks, Harry,” he repeats at last, jumping off the countertop and loosening the knot of his tie. “I’m shit at art, yeah? But what you paint, it’s good.”

“Maybe I’ll have the greatest honour of posthumous recognition,” Harry says lightly, sipping at his tea. Eggsy gives him a look. “Besides, you are not  _ shit  _ at art.”

“I’m good at  _ being  _ art,” Eggsy says teasingly. “Apparently.”

“Apparently,” Harry echoes.

This is something new, Eggsy halfway between the poise of the Arrow Collar Man and his own brass, his tie half-undone around his neck and a chipped, tea-stained cup in his hand, with a few locks of hair falling on his forehead after escaping the hold of the pomade he’d probably nicked from Harry’s bathroom. Galatea in the middle of the night slowly warming up as blood flows through her body for the first time, the marble of her turning soft.

“I’m gonna order us some dinner, yeah?” Eggsy says, sitting at the kitchen table and pulling his cell out, tapping through and pulling up the Just Eat app like he does several times a week, when they get home exhausted. “What are you feeling?”

“I don’t know,” Harry tells him.

He really doesn’t.


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chocolate chip pancakes, ripe strawberries, and all of my apologies for not posting this yesterday. There's a thousand words more than usual, though.
> 
> Two pieces this week: _[Portrait of a man](https://66.media.tumblr.com/ccc160006e2352552a21bbed7e23b47a/tumblr_o90owc3TUo1vvdm7qo1_1280.jpg) ___by Konstantin Somov, which if I am not mistaken is a preliminary study for _[The Boxer](https://67.media.tumblr.com/cc879fbc9ce2d8d517214584f0b4bbb9/tumblr_o0vn24ySYQ1upqeooo2_r1_1280.jpg)_ (NSFW); and [_Guest_](http://sircolinfilth.tumblr.com/post/146152564412/guest-eggsy-unwin-2016-eggsy-burrows-himself-in) by Eggsy Unwin.
> 
> Come yell at me on [tumblr](http://sircolinfilth.tumblr.com)!

Past mid-December, when Harry sends Elenore and her people at Penguin Classics an update on the painting, he’s startled to get an automated email back from another woman on the committee that begins with _Hello, I will be on holiday from December 19th until January 2nd_ and ends with _Merry holidays and best wishes to all of you!_ A glance at the calendar confirms that it’s the 20th.

“Will you be spending Christmas with your family?” he asks Eggsy later that day, during a tea break.

He is standing near his easel, but not looking at Dorian - he’s observing Eggsy as the boy positions himself near a window, the last rays of sun filtering through the glass and falling golden and warm on his face. When Eggsy looks down his eyelashes throw long shadows down his cheeks, razor-sharp little lines on his skin. He’s a Caravaggio, the warmth of sleepy sunrays sculpting his face in deep shadows and golden hues. Galatea raises the camera and opens an eye, the sun making his eyes gleam, highlighting the green-blue of them. For a second he disappears behind the bulky Polaroid, his fingers pressing the shutter button; then he reappears, Eggsy again, collecting the picture and shaking it slowly, thoughtfully.

“Nah,” Eggsy says. “Last year my mum and my stepdad stayed at the pub ‘til three, then he kicked me out so they could have _proper family time_ with my sister. I got her a present, though, so I’ll probably stop by soon.” A break, then, to observe the Polaroid picture he just shot; then a quick glance up at Harry. “Did you have plans or something? I can go somewhere else.”

“No,” Harry says faintly. “No plans.”

Truth be told, he has not celebrated Christmas since he was a boy. His parents would take him and his brother to St Paul’s for the midnight eucharist; then the next morning they would open presents in the parlour after a torturous breakfast in the dining room, staring at the tree and the small sprawl of gifts beneath it. The whole affair stopped when Harry turned thirteen and his brother fifteen, replaced by a kiss on the cheek and a card with a sweet if stiff note and a cheque. Harry had exchanged presents with boyfriends over the years, bottles of whiskey and leather-bound books followed by more enjoyable bouts of snogging on the sofa. Some twelve years ago he’d spent the holiday season in Germany with his partner at the time - that’s the most he remembers doing in the recent years, save for a Christmas about five years ago he’d spent with Merlin and his wife, somewhere between their children leaving home and returning with baby Maeve in tow.

The thought lingers for the next couple of days - on the twenty-first, Eggsy leaves as planned with a large box wrapped in pink Disney paper and promises to be back in time for dinner. Harry rings Merlin both to fill the time and pass his best wishes in the holiday season. He reaches him surrounded by the faraway noises of shoppers. He’s getting stocking fillers for his granddaughter, he says tightly, though Harry _knows_ the tree Merlin’s daughter-in-law painstakingly decorated in the drawing room of the MacKay house is already surrounded by countless boxes and bundles of various sizes containing toys and clothes delivered by Amazon weeks ago.

Harry thinks of presents all the way to Cornelissen’s, later, out for more paints. In the middle of the shop, various sets of oils and watercolours and brushes are laid out on a table, under a brightly-painted sign announcing _Gifts_. As he pays, before he can stop himself, he asks the salesman:

“Would you happen to know a good photography shop in the city?”

The lad doesn’t know, but he fetches one of his coworkers who points Harry to Aperture helpfully, draws a little map on the back of his receipt and sends him on his way.

Only a few minutes away, the shop’s front is bright red. Inside it’s very quiet, only the murmur of fellow shoppers bundled up in their coats and carrying armfuls of bags. Harry was never much for photography. He can see its usefulness - he’s always been glad to be able to rely on photography to keep pictures of poses and colours as he worked on more time-consuming pieces, but he’s never been one to obsessively take pictures of his life, of loved ones or of monuments as he travelled. Harry has always preferred carrying a sketchbook than a camera.

Eggsy, though - he takes his phone out whenever he sees something interesting or amusing, a pub with a cheeky name or a child hugging his mother’s legs on the streets, a small, cute dog hidden inside a lady’s handbag at the supermarket and a particularly nice sky at sunset over Lambeth Bridge. When he _does_ something interesting he turns the camera on himself and snaps selfie after selfie - Harry suspects it has to do with his generation. But he remembers his uncle filming himself with an old Super 8 camera in Thailand, sometime in the seventies; his brother sending him self-shots of himself and his then-wife looking exhausted with a little bundle of boy on her chest at one point in the eighties. When Harry’s nephew had children of his own, though, a few years ago, the volume of pictures had been vastly different. Selfies of Maria - Mary? Marianne? - with two steadily growing little girls filled his nephew’s phone when Harry had last seen him a few summers ago.

It’s not the same, though.

When he sees Eggsy’s camera roll, or the fast-growing pile of Polaroid pictures in his studio, Harry doesn’t think of little Olivia and Rebecca held close against their mum, or of his father’s brother talking about Ao Nang. He thinks of Doisneau and Cartier-Bresson, and just a little, guiltily, of Narcissus bent towards the water.

“Do you need anything, sir?” a woman asks him, smiling gently, pulling Harry out of his reverie.

“Yes,” he says. He swallows. “I am looking for a Christmas gift for a young man.”

“You know we mostly sell secondhand cameras, right?” she tells him gently. “How old is he? Maybe he would enjoy a DSLR more.”

“No,” Harry says resolutely, thinking of the pile of Polaroid pictures. “No, I think a film camera would do nicely.”

She walks him through the wooden shelves, showing him the small selection of point-and-shoot cameras, patiently explaining which types of film to use for each, going as far as to show Harry sample pictures. In the end he steers her towards the more professional cameras, where he recognises a camera his mother owned when he was a boy.

When he leaves fifteen minutes later, Harry’s hand is tight around the handle of the bag containing a Nikon FM2 camera, a few rolls of 35mm film both in colour and in black and white, and three different types of lenses. He hurries back towards Oxford Street to catch a cab and return to Kensington, stopping the cabbie in front of Waitrose abruptly to buy wrapping paper. Once home he settles in at the dining room table with two fingers of scotch and the roll of tasteful golden paper, meticulously piling up the boxes in a precarious bundle before wrapping them.

By the time his glass is empty and his gift wrapped, the boxes hidden and out of view, Harry feels a little less foolish. He stashes the box in his bedroom and puts the wrapping paper on the highest shelf of the hallway closet. By the time Eggsy gets home he’s in the drawing room, reading with a cup of tea next to him, and when he sees Eggsy’s hands Harry pretends not to notice either the colourful streaks of marker ink on his fingers or the light scrapes on his knuckles.

The next day, they’re back at the studio. Over the next couple of days he focuses on Eggsy’s hands, now clean. He’s put on Vaseline on his knuckles, the skin a little shiny with it. It only gives Harry more highlights to paint, to put the hands in evidence as much as the large intricate rings. The silver of them gleams dangerously, like the blade of a knife, stained ruby and sapphire by the heavy stones adorning them. In front of him Eggsy wears no jewelry, but Harry knows where to place subtle glazes of red and blue and yellow to show their reflected colours, as though there were faraway lights shining down on Dorian’s skin.

When he looks up and blinks owlishly when he finds himself expecting Eggsy’s hands to be bearing Dorian’s almost-gaudy rings, Harry orders a break.

He makes them tea, lemon, sugar and milk; milk and honey. He pads back out the kitchenette and finds Eggsy standing behind his stool, staring at the canvas with a frown and the Polaroid camera in his hands. He’s holding it at waist level, his finger poised on the shutter button.

“It’s not finished,” Harry warns, setting down Eggsy’s cup on the chair where he had been sitting.

“Yeah, I know that,” Eggsy says, his eyes flicking up to throw him an unimpressed look. “I think it’s interesting to see it in progress like that, is all.”

“There was a lovely exhibition last year on unfinished works at the Somerset House,” Harry recalls after a sip of his tea. “Perhaps you’d have envoyed it.”

Eggsy just hums distractedly in answer before pressing the button, collecting the picture before shaking it. He sets it down on Harry’s stool and takes out his cellphone, snapping a picture of the still-developing photograph. Harry watches him, his hands still holding his phone above it, as he waits and takes a second shot, then a third, a fourth. Next to Harry the cup of tea is steaming, its small wisp of steam drifting up and into the air steadily, like a metronome. Eggsy doesn’t move, takes a fifth picture, then a sixth one. Then he finally seems satisfied, walking around the easel for his tea.

“Work in progress of a work in progress?” Harry asks, nodding at Eggsy’s phone still in his hand.

“Don’t take the piss, Harry,” Eggsy tells him. “S’cool, innit? How shit is made, how things come together.”

“I really am not,” Harry says. Eggsy gives him a suspicious sort of look but hands him his cellphone.

“Swipe left, like on Tinder,” Eggsy instructs, and he laughs when Harry throws him a perplexed glance.

On the first shot the Polaroid picture is white, barely creamy. On the second one there’s barely a hint of shadows, more precise on the third one. The fourth shows details: the rings, Dorian’s nails. They’re more colourful on the fifth, then everything is clear on the sixth.

Harry watches, swipes all the way back to the first one a few times, and thinks of Eggsy slowly revealing himself, of his Galatea near Gloucester Road, Liam in Holborn, Eggsy in South Hampstead and Dorian in Bethnal Green. Of himself bent over the small sketchbook in his drawing room, over and over again; of Eggsy and Galatea in Kensington, sitting on Harry’s sofa and at his kitchen table and sleeping in his guest room and inside that sketchbook. Of himself drawing Eggsy one, two, a hundred times, and of Eggsy taking one, two, a hundred pictures of himself through his own eyes and Harry’s.

“Interesting,” he says.

“That’s it? _Interesting_?” Eggsy parrots, eyebrows raised, sliding his phone back inside his pocket.

“Don’t fish for compliments, it’s unbecoming,” Harry chides him.

“Harry,” Eggsy says slowly, collecting their cups and taking them to the kitchenette. Raising his voice to be heard over the rushing water as he washes them, he continues, “I don’t need to fish for shit. You spend your time drawing my face.”

And. Well. He’s not wrong.

The next morning, on Christmas eve, Harry wakes late, washes up, gets dressed, and presses the button on the ansaphone after coming down the stairs. There are no new messages. Eggsy is apparently already up, given the few breadcrumbs on the kitchen table, but he is nowhere to be seen. Harry fixes himself a cup of tea and is idly considering making some eggs for breakfast when a key turns in the lock of the front door and Eggsy bustles in. He’s carrying two shopping bags in each hand, and Harry pushes his cup out of the way when Eggsy drops them on the breakfast table.

“What’s this?” he asks, taking a careful sip.

“Proper food for tomorrow,” Eggsy says with a pleased flourish. “We’re having turkey and ham, with all the trimmings.”

He pulls out ready-cooked, vacuum-sealed slices of turkey and a packet of smoked ham, a little baggie of gravy and one of bread sauce, sweating bags of frozen Aunt Bessie’s roast potatoes and brussel sprouts, mince pies and Christmas pudding, even a box of crackers. It’s all very overwhelming.

“Are we going to be able to eat all of this?” Harry asks faintly.

“I will,” Eggsy says gravely, stuffing the food in the freezer and the fridge. “You can make yourself a chip butty or something.”

The condensation from the bags and boxes has left the surface of the table wet and cold. Harry watches as Eggsy wipes it with his sleeve pulled down over his hand absently, then stuffs the balled-up shopping bags in the drawer under the sink. He gets a bottle of mango juice out of the fridge and stands in front of the open door while he drinks, head thrown back, his Adam’s apple bobbing as he swallows. He’s a disaster. He’s a miracle.

Harry doesn’t say anything.

Later he makes them lunch - peas and bangers that leave Eggsy’s mouth looking shiny and glossy with grease - and afterwards Eggsy burrows himself in an armchair in the drawing room, solitary under the small halo of a reading lamp, and inside _The Great Gatsby_. He’s finished _The Portrait_ a long time ago, followed up with _Lady Chatterley’s Lover_ and has just gotten started on Fitzgerald. He’s quiet and unmoving, eyes darting rapidly over the lines, so of course Harry sits opposite him with a glass of port and draws him.

“Everyone’s sad and bitchy in this,” Eggsy mutters. “That Daisy bird…” He trails off at the end and says nothing else, turning the page over.

“How did you sister like her gift, by the way?” Harry asks absently, sketching the long lines of Eggsy’s legs and the knobbly curves of his ankles.

“Ain’t Christmas yet,” Eggsy answers with a cocked eyebrow and a small smile. “Mum hid it for me, says she’ll give it to her tomorrow and send me pictures.”

They’re quiet for a bit, just the turning of pages and the scritch-scratch of Harry’s pencil in his sketchbook.

“Does your mother know where you are staying?”

“Yeah,” Eggsy says after a beat. “Yeah.” He looks up, head tilted to the side, eyes far, far away. “Told her I was staying with mates.”

“Alright,” Harry says. “Alright.”

It’s not exactly a lie - Harry himself wouldn’t say _mates_ , but he’d call himself friends, of a sort. 

Come Christmas morning Harry makes an effort to raise early and cooks a proper breakfast, spreads both butter and rhubarb jam on his toast and fries eggs and rashers. Eggsy comes down in time for a plateful of both, eats more toast than strictly necessary, and kicks Harry in the leg to get his attention as he’s mopping up the egg yolk on his plate.

“Merry Christmas, Harry”, he says around a mouthful of bread.

“Merry Christmas, dear,” Harry answers absently, and Eggsy’s toes press against his shin for a brief second before his foot swings back.

The whole day, Harry thinks of the golden parcel in his bedroom closet. They don’t do much - Eggsy reads and Harry draws, again; at some point around lunchtime they go out for a quiet walk in the deserted streets, where they walk along Cromwell Road aimlessly side by side. Eggsy offers him a cigarette, which Harry accepts after explaining he used to smoke, years and years ago, back in the late seventies and in the eighties when everyone else did. Eggsy makes some sort of inane joke about peer pressure and tells him about pooling coins with his mates to buy a pack of Chesterfields for less than four quid ten years ago. His pack of Lambert & Butler is torn to shreds, bits of cardboard ripped away from it. _Roaches_ , Eggsy explains, squirming a little, when he catches Harry staring. Their breaths are big great white clouds in the cold air, like fog, like something out of a murder mystery.

Not long after they get home, Harry gets two phone calls: Merlin, first on speakerphone with his wife, children and grandchild wishing Harry a merry Christmas in a mess of happy voices; then just him, tightly enquiring after Eggsy, whom Harry puts on speaker as well to let him give Merlin stiff wishes. Then his brother George, awkward but sincere, not so far away in Notting Hill but still sounding light-years away over the phone, until he puts his granddaughters on and Harry can hear him instruct in a fond whisper to _wish_ _my brother Harry_ a happy holiday. Harry is glad, he realises when he hangs up later, that his brother is happy.

He’s a little bit happy, too.

Eggsy and him skip lunch and make the Christmas feast together, elbows bumping into hips in Harry’s small kitchen, then eat at the dining room table in Harry’s finest china. Afterwards, with raisins and crumbs languishing in his sticky plate, Harry feels comfortable and pleasantly full. He pours them each three fingers of cognac and watches Eggsy.

It’s strange, just watching him, no pencil, no paintbrush, no justification for it. He’s licking bits of pudding off his fingers, wincing at the burn of cognac when he takes a sip. There’s a paper crown sitting lopsided atop his head, from one of the crackers he’d made Harry pull with him. The small padlock that was in another sits abandoned on the tablecloth, next to the near-empty bowl of brussel sprouts - _What sort of shite gift is that_ , Eggsy had said, _you must’ve been naughty, I’ve been a nice boy all year._

“Would you excuse me a minute?” Harry says, and he gets up without waiting for an answer. Eggsy watches him go, bleary-eyed and flushed with the liquor and the abundance of food.

He feels silly for a moment, standing on the staircase with the box in his hands, but he squashes the feeling down like a bug and strides towards the dining room, where Eggsy is still sitting, sprawled down over the table with his head propped up on one elbow. He perks up when Harry enters and sets the box down on the table, then frowns.

“Harry,” he says, slowly, glaring at the box then at Harry. “I ain’t got shit for you.”

“Well, I must have been naughty, as you said.” He smiles, lazy, warm. “Open it.”

Eggsy gives him a wary look, then for a bit there’s just the sounds of paper ripping and crumpling. Harry sits back down to watch, hiding behind his glass of cognac, and thinks he hears Eggsy’s sharp little intake of breath. The very tip of his ears has gone red.

“Harry,” he says. “ _Harry_.” One hand curls around the box as he looks up, wide-eyed. “I take three shit pics with your camera and- you can’t do this, fuck, Harry, I _can’t_ take it.”

“It’s secondhand,” Harry tells him. “I cannot return it.”

Eggsy shakes his head, but his eyes are on the gifts again, darting between the camera and the lenses and the boxes of film.

“I don’t even know how to use it,” he says weakly.

“You will learn,” Harry says, resolutely.

He spends the remainder of the day teaching Eggsy what he remembers from his youth, which lenses to use, how to load the film, what some of the little symbols and abbreviations mean. At some point Eggsy takes out his phone and Googles explanations and instructions, so Harry leaves him to it and sets to load the crockery and cutlery in the dishwasher.

When he returns to the dining room, Eggsy is still absorbed in the camera and whatever site he found on his phone, fidgeting with settings and screwing lenses in and out of place. Harry lies down on the sofa with a book and reads quietly, listening to the sounds of Eggsy one room over, the quiet tapping on his fingers on his phone and the clicking sounds of the camera’s buttons and lenses, the rifling of the wrapping paper he has not clearer away.

He must fall asleep, because he wakes slowly to the sound of bare feet padding on the rug, then the shutter of a camera.

“How the tables have turned,” he mutters, his voice low and sleep-rough. Eggsy laughs quietly, and Harry cracks open one eye to see it, his happy face half-hidden behind the bulk of the camera.

“It’s weird, not seeing it right away,” Eggsy says, frowning at the camera but still smiling when he looks at Harry. “But seriously, Harry, thank you. And you know,” he continues, a bit softer, a bit quieter, “not just for that.”

At that, Harry opens both eyes to look at him, standing sober and serious barefoot in Harry’s drawing room, the tip of his ears still pink, his fingers clenched around his camera, his uneasiness, one of a boy that has not had many occasions to thank anyone for anything.

“I ought to thank _you_ ,” Harry says at last. “But you are most welcome, Eggsy.”

He closes his eyes and covers his face with his book when Eggsy raises the camera again, but smiles when he hears the shutter.

Unsurprisingly, they’re back at the studio the next day, then the one after that. On the twenty-eighth Eggsy visits his mother and sister soon after breakfast with promises to join him in Bethnal Green early afternoon. When he does, Harry is pleased not to find any bruises or scrapes on his face, nothing but a pleased little smile when he tells Harry his baby sister loved her gift and has been playing with it non-stop since Christmas morning.

“And it made me think,” Eggsy says, taking off his scarf and leaving it on his chair, followed by his jacket. His shoes are abandoned in the entryway, and he toes off his socks, too, stumbling on his way to the shelves of supplies lining the wall. “I didn’t get you shit.”

“You do not have to get me anything,” Harry tells him absently, arranging his brushes meticulously.

Eggsy hands him a sketchbook, then the small leather case where Harry keeps his favourite sketching supplies.

“One of my mates,” Eggsy says, slowly, a little too loud, “after school, when we were all doing shite jobs, she did this life model thing for a bit.” He turns around and takes off his polo shirt. Harry’s mouth goes dry. He sees the flash of a gold chain around Eggsy neck before he takes it off, too, stuffing it in his trousers’ pocket before Harry hears the sound of a zipper and Eggsy turns back around, standing there barefoot and shirtless with his jeans open. “ _Proper_ life model. Said she asked around one time, why they all took the class, and they said it was really helpful. I think some blokes just wanted to stare at a naked lady for a bit, but I guess I can see why it’s a thing?” He’s rambling, now, fidgeting with the button on his jeans before he pushes them down abruptly.

“Eggsy,” Harry says.

“Tell me if this is no good, yeah? Guess you’ve done this before, in all your posh art schools.” He laughs self-consciously. “Harry, tell me if I should stop before I show you my bollocks, please.”

Harry _stares_.

He thinks of Somov’s boxer, Bazille’s fishermen, Etty’s athletes; muscles, broad backs, strong thighs, quiet and open expressions on their faces, nonchalant in their nudity, sun-kissed or candle-lit. 

He opens his sketchbook, poises the lead of a knife-sharp pencil on the paper, and waits for the whisper of Eggsy’s shorts going down, down, _down_ before he looks up.


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Two fingers of Jameson, and a _[Study of a young man as seen from the back](https://66.media.tumblr.com/20370e8eb88251554f0dfba96d4ac016/tumblr_o9cti36Cnt1vvdm7qo1_1280.jpg)_ , by John Singer Sargent.
> 
> Thank you all for the amazing response to last week's chapter. All of your kudos and comments mean the world to me. There are no words.
> 
> [On tumblr](http://sircolinfilth.tumblr.com), if needed.

When he looks up, Harry is struck with the overwhelming desire to look back down.

Eggsy is a Rodin, the curious lovechild of a painting of Rossetti and one of Somov’s studies, Michelangelo's David standing impervious and proud. On his pre-raphaelite-pale skin every single one of Monet’s water lilies is blooming in the subtlest blush.

“Eggsy,” Harry says, his throat dry. “You don’t have to do that.”

“S’good practice, yeah?” Eggsy mumbles, unmoving. “Anatomy and shit.”

“If it makes you uncomfortable-”

“You like drawing me, yeah?” Harry nods dumbly. The pencil feels loose in his clammy grip. “You always draw me the same, in the house or the thing,” Eggsy says, gesturing at the easel. Harry’s eyes follow the path of his hand, staring into Dorian’s cold eyes for a moment. “This is just something different.”

_You’re something different_ , Harry wants to say, for a second. The words are on the tip of his tongue, childish and heavy; he swallows them down thickly, like a mouthful of stale shortbread.

Then he bows his head like a courtier in front of a prince and starts to draw.

Almost immediately Harry wishes for colours, oils or pencils or even watercolours, anything to show the paleness of Eggsy’s belly and thighs, the slightest hint of gold in the skin of his arms and neck. He remembers thinking about Eggsy’s moles, what seems like eons ago; about the ones that wandered up his neck to rest on his throat and near his ear.

Wanderers.

There’s a smattering of freckles on his collarbones, down to his sternum like spilled brown sugar on the smooth marble of a cafe’s counter. Under, on his chest, there are beauty marks, a splatter of them surrounding his round, rose nipples. There are more over his shoulders and down his arms and his thighs, on his knees and calves hidden by knobs or hair, over his feet; a bigger mole over the boniest part of his right ankle, not unlike the one under his biceps, surrounded by a cluster of smaller, lighter ones; or at his throat.

Harry looks up, thinking only of that mark, and meets Eggsy’s eyes.

“Are you alright?” he asks, gently. Eggsy gives a half-shrug, careful not to change his posture too much.

“Yeah,” Eggsy says. “Keep drawing.”

So Harry does - sketches out long lines for Eggsy’s legs, lovely little curves for the knobs of his bones and wide ones for his shoulders and torso; scratches the paper in short strokes to draw the hair on his legs and arms and torso then barely grazes the surface of it with the lead of his pencil for the dusting of fine, soft-looking hair covering Eggsy’s thighs. Between them his cock rests, flaccid, the head of it swallowed by the foreskin, his bollocks nestled behind it. When Harry sketches the trail of hair leading up from it to Eggsy’s bellybutton, his eyes going up his torso to glance at his nipples, he notices they are pink and peaked, the skin around them raised in goosebumps.

“Are you cold?” Without waiting for an answer, Harry raises. “I’ll turn up the heat.”

Soon enough it’s almost uncomfortably warm. Eggsy mumbles his thanks but doesn’t otherwise move. He’s Danger’s _Plague_ walking away from destruction, Thorvaldsen’s _Jason_ calm and victorious, Granger’s _Ganymede_ confidently feeding the eagle circling around him. He is Harry’s Galatea with a sky’s worth of moles like stars on his skin, watching with eyes as green as they are blue as Harry makes him be on paper and drinks the sight of him, swallows with his gaze every single part of him.

The shadows keep shifting, the sun slowly but surely setting with its brumal earliness. Next to Harry, Dorian is slowly swallowed by darkness. The single lamp he’d lit when he’d arrived, a few minutes before Eggsy did, is not enough anymore.

“Would you like some tea?” Harry asks.

Eggsy shakes his head, minutely, his eyes never leaving Harry’s.

“Do you want me to move or something? You’re near done, innit?”

Blinking owlishly, Harry looks down at the sketchbook. He’s not, he’s really not. He never will be.

“Change poses, if you’d like,” he says nonetheless, flipping the page over. “I’ll put more lights on.”

Eggsy moves, stretching languidly, and _oh_ , if only he could hold that pose, his arms raised and his torso big with a long breath, every muscle of his body taut. Instead he sits crossed-legged on the floor with his back turned to Harry. He looks over his shoulder briefly.

“This alright, yeah?” he asks. “My legs are kinda tired.”

“Anything you’d like,” Harry says, and he settles down again with his sketchbook, his pencil, and the most beautiful boy in the world.

There are more moles on Eggsy’s back, some dotted down the length of his spine like some game of connect the dots leading straight to his arse. The lines of his shoulderblades look almost dangerous, coming into focus every time Eggsy breathes in, his shoulders falling every time he breathes out. It’s almost hypnotic, that steady little rise and fall.

In the middle of shading, slowly and methodically, for every knob of Eggsy’s spine catches the light, for the curves of his shoulders are kissed by it along with the top of his head, for there are two little dimples above his arse, and the most discrete, obscene mole there, too - in the middle of it Eggsy turns his head and watches him, patient and quiet.

Harry turns the page over abruptly and draws, the curve of Eggsy’s nose, the sharpness of his jaw, the softness of his eyes, curious, indulgent, serious. The shape of his left ear and the three little moles under it, evenly spaced, like an ellipsis.

“I am afraid my hand is cramping up,” Harry says after a while, after every disorganised strand of Eggsy’s hair and every fold of skin at his elbows. Even to his own ears he sounds dreadfully contrite.

Eggsy raises, snatches his shirt off the chair, and slips it back on. His shorts and jeans follow and just like that he’s all Eggsy again, barefoot on Harry’s floors and striding to the kitchenette with familiarity, filling up the kettle and switching it on while Harry stretches his hands and focuses on breathing. He dates the sketches dutifully, darkens a line there and there, adds the slightest bit of shade under Eggsy’s jaw, his collarbones, the inside of his thigh. He doesn’t hear Eggsy padding back quietly from the kitchen until he gives a little hum right next to Harry’s right ear and startles violently.

“Sorry,” Eggsy says in the voice of someone who is not sorry at all. He’s silent for a minute. Harry hears the electric kettle gurgling in the kitchenette, a car driving by down in the street. Eggsy reaches towards the sketchbook slowly, giving Harry plenty of time to put it out of his reach if needed. He doesn’t. “Nice,” Eggsy comments at last. “Did you like it?”

“Yes,” Harry tells him. He clears his throat. “I had done it in the past, during my studies. I posed myself a few times, even. It is always a good exercise, I had not done it in a long time.”

Eggsy gives a little hum at that, low in the back of his throat. He flips a page, falling on a sketch of himself standing, staring into Harry’s eyes and up from the paper into his own.

“Galatea?” he asks, lightly, a hint of a smile in his voice but no trace on it on his face.

Harry looks at him, listens to the water boiling in the kitchen, watches the three little beauty marks under Eggsy’s ear.

“No,” he says simply, and cranes his neck to look at Eggsy properly.

Eggsy’s eyes flicker between the sketchbook and Harry’s eyes, between the image of himself and the beholder. He says nothing. When the electric kettle clicks loudly, the rush of water quieting, his lips tremble, once, like he’s fighting back a smile; and he looks at the sketchbook one last time before walking away to fix them tea.

It’s far too late in the day for any proper work so Harry takes him to the Well and Bucket up the road and quietly delights in having Eggsy make the most ridiculous faces whenever Harry eats one of his oysters. In turn Eggsy chews with his mouth open and rubs his greasy fingers on his jacket, so Harry steals chips off his plate once he has finished his own meal. The first time Eggsy kicks him in the shin, the second he just glares at him; the third he doesn’t even notice as Harry recounts tales of studying in Florence and tries to remember what little Italian he has not yet forgotten after thirty-some years.

When they go home the drive is quiet, comfortable, and Harry leans the side his head against the headrest to watch the city lights play on Eggsy’s face.

The next day it’s as if everything is back to normal - he watches Eggsy eat way too much toast with way too much jam on it, chides him for getting crumbs inside Harry’s copy of _The Great Gatsby_ , and they spend the day in the studio working on giving Dorian life and death at the same time.

“What you doing for New Year’s?” Eggsy asks during one of their tea breaks, fiddling with his camera and screwing a fixed focal length lens into place before rising the camera and adjusting the focus, slowly, fingers unpracticed but nimble. Harry waits for him to take his shot - himself, sitting behind his easel with a steaming cup of tea in hand - to answer.

“Not much. I think I will be staying home this year.”

“Really?” Eggsy gives him a strange, almost pitying look at that, setting his camera down to pick up his own tea. “Ain’t you got some posh party to go to?”

Harry actually thinks about it for a minute. Last year he’d had dinner with Merlin and his wife and their friends - or was that the year before? He knows at some point in the last five years he’s spent it at some lavish affair thrown by an acquaintance of Chester, and another at a quiet gathering organised by both Jameses where he’d felt terribly out of place and had left not fifteen minutes after midnight.

“Perhaps I’ll do something with friends,” Harry says with finality, collecting their cups to take them to the kitchenette. “Any plans?”

“Going round to my mate Ryan’s,” Eggsy shrugs.

Then he sits back down, and when Harry returns, he’s Dorian again.

The painting is coming along nicely - as formal and dark as needed, Dorian not quite emerging from the depths of the background but still not being swallowed into it, stuck between both with his youth and beauty as a beacon of light to keep himself standing still in time. Everything about him is dangerously inviting, his soft mouth and his clear eyes; but there’s a curl at the corner his lips and a gleam in his look as a warning; his sharp jaw could cut any enamoured finger that would try to graze it.

On the other side of the canvas Eggsy’s eyes, fixed on Harry, seem to see everything - in his hands at time his camera does - and somewhere in the middle Galatea stares, too, tugging at Eggsy’s lips to give Dorian what is neither a pout nor a smirk.

Every night in bed Harry looks at the ceiling, dark grey with all the lights off and a vague reflection of faraway streetlights, before falling asleep. He wonders if he can hears Eggsy breathing, moving, turning over in bed, a couple of doors and night’s cloak of darkness between them.

When the thirty-first comes, they leave the studio late in the afternoon. Harry leaves Eggsy to shower and get dressed up, smiling behind a glass of whiskey when the boy trudges down the stairs and stalks into the drawing room in jeans and a black polo shirt, all swallowed up in an oversized hoodie. He smells of cheap aftershave and seems to have combed his hair, ruining it seconds later by putting on a cap. Eggsy takes Harry’s tumbler from his hand and gives it a suspicious sniff before swallowing down a good half of it, his entire face crunching up.

“Yeah,” he says tightly, “I’m off. What time do you leave?”

“Soon, as well,” Harry says, glancing at his watch. It’s half seven. “Have a good night, Eggsy.”

“Don’t wait up,” Eggsy tells him brightly, handing him his glass back and adjusting his cap.

“Hoping for a midnight kiss?” Harry teases in spite of himself.

Eggsy flashes a V-sign at him and walks out.

For tea Harry eats leftovers at the kitchen table - some curry Eggsy had made a few days prior, Marks and Spencer’s finest tikka masala - and listens to the radio. He considers, briefly, phoning friends and family to wish them well for the upcoming year, then decides against it. On his way back to the drawing room he sees the sketchbook, still there on the side table, and strokes his fingers along the sharp edge for a second, feeling maudlin.

He has a third finger of whiskey for pudding, then collects his coat and walks out.

Quickly he realises getting a cab will be a feat, so he takes the tube instead, standing amongst excited partiers already reeking of liquor. A young lady with a bright shock of green hair and glitter smeared all over her decolletage offers him her seat after a glance at him, and Harry refuses staunchly. Next year he will be fifty-seven. Eggsy will turn twenty-five.

On Bethnal Green road most of the shops are closed, but the streets are bustling, people spilling out of pubs and over the kerb, standing in acrid clouds of smoke and laughter. In front of an off-licence a lad is sprawled on the pavement, brown sick on his trackies. Harry keeps walking. It’s fifteen minutes to the studio. Even in the quiet building people are celebrating, music echoing through their front doors when Harry climbs the stairs up the last floor.

It feels strange, almost wrong, being at the studio without Eggsy. Inside, everything is as he’d left it, Dorian on the easel and both Eggsy’s and his chair on either side of it, the canvas a fence between them.

Harry considers tea, stands in front of the sink with the kettle in hand, then puts it back and rummages the cupboards for the bottle of Balvenie he remembers leaving at the studio. He pours two fingers at first, then adds two more, and sits at his painting stool to drink it, staring at the empty space in front of him. When he turns away his eyes fall on the sketchbook sitting on a shelf, not properly put away after he’d used it on the twenty-eighth.

It’s the scotch that makes him grab it and sit right there on the floor, with his back digging uncomfortably into the shelves behind.

On the creamy paper Eggsy stares, stares, stares, short limbs and muscles under skin splattered with beauty marks like a proof, a seal placed there by whatever creator placed him on this Earth and under Harry’s eyes to tell him, as though he were blind, as though Eggsy were a definition, an illustration in an old dictionary, _here is beauty_. Harry takes a long drink and strokes the very tip of his finger down Eggsy’s side, smudging the graphite.

His cock is stiff, he realises.

Harry downs the rest of his drink in one gulp and scrambles to get up. On the easel Dorian’s haughty eyes seem to mock him. His knees ache all the way to the bathroom. In the mirror his skin is flushed, his wrinkles too prominent under the fluorescent lighting, his hair too grey. He looks mad. He _feels_ mad. In his trousers his prick is valiantly fighting alcohol and age and reason all at once; in his head Eggsy and Galatea swim, faces and voices muted like they’re underwater, drowned in a splash of scotch and fifty-six years of memories.

Harry splashes water over his face and stalks back out, avoiding his own eyes in the mirror.

The sketchbook is left open to the boy looking up at him.

Angry in Gloucester Road, defiant in Camden Market, lying in Holborn, intrigued in South Hampstead, willing in Bethnal Green, alive in Kensington; _alive_ in the largest sense of the word, barefoot in Harry’s kitchen with jam on his cheek, leaving biscuit crumbs on Harry’s carpets, blaring music from the guest room, dog-earing Harry’s books, lazing on his sofa and cooking in his kitchen, inescapable and constant. Everywhere in Harry’s home and on his mind.

Baring his teeth at first and then baring _everything_ , flaws and all, with a disarming sort of trustiness and devotion that came quicker than Harry would have thought possible from a boy of Eggsy’s background, whose emotional loneliness as a child turned into this fast eagerness for companionship and support. Baring everything, his body, just because he noticed the glaring obviousness of Harry’s artistic and aesthetic appreciation for his physique; because he wanted to give him more.

At the bottom of the page, Harry writes _Eggsy_.

He’s gone back to sitting on the floor, feeling sentimental, staring at his empty glass, when the door to the studio opens.

“Fucking hell, Harry, that’s one shite party.”

There he is, smelling of cigarettes and cheap liquor and just a whiff of the aftershave he’d applied before leaving. His cap is gone, his hair tousled. His collar is a bit askew - when he moves closer, under the main light, Harry can see the gleaming gold of the chain he wears under his polo shirt.

“What are you doing here?” he asks blearily. It might be a mirage, he thinks. He might have fallen in the loo and cracked his skull open on the edge of the bathtub.

“Well bloody hello to you too,” Eggsy says with a grin, pushing the sketchbook aside carelessly to sit down next to Harry, legs spread wide. “Party went to shit when someone dared this bird to drink five pints of Guinness.”

“Did she?” Harry asks, feeling warm all over.

“Yeah, wasn’t the issue, what happened is that Jamal and his mate had gone to the offie and they didn’t believe us, so she did it again.” He grimaces and knocks his elbow against Harry’s. “So I nicked the champagne someone bought and thought I’d see if you were having yourself a bit of a pity party, and look at you! Properly pissed, ain’t we?”

Harry laughs and nods, his head feeling heavy. For just one indulgent second, he rests his forehead against Eggsy’s shoulder. The cool fabric of his hoodie reeks of weed and cheap aftershave. It’s strangely comforting.

“What time is it?” Harry mutters.

“Ten to midnight,” Eggsy says cheerfully. “Stay there, I’ll get us a couple of glasses, yeah?”

Harry does not have flutes at the studio, so Eggsy comes back with two different drinking glasses and clumsily rips the foil off the bottle before twisting out the cork. It comes out with a loud pop, some foam bubbling up and out to dribble over Eggsy’s fist. Harry watches him laugh and wipe it off on his hoodie.

For a while they sit quietly, sipping what is probably the cheapest champagne Harry has ever drunk - a tenner at Asda, he’d guess. It’s the least dignified he remembers being, sitting in his shirt on the floor with his cardigan abandoned on the sofa and his glasses a bit askew on his face. It makes everything seem a bit blurry, a bit eerie.

It almost comes as a surprise when a loud cheer erupts from the floors below, and Eggsy blinks at his cellphone before raising his glass.

“Hey, cheers. Happy new year, Harry.”

Harry blinks at him and knocks his glass against Eggsy’s. From the street he hears cars honking, people hollering. The downstairs neighbours are playing _We are the champions_ at full volume. Harry wets his lips with a drink of champagne then chases the unpleasant bitterness with a pass of his tongue.

“Eggsy,” he begins. Once again he sets his forehead against Eggsy’s shoulder, feels the shift of his muscles when Eggsy turns to look at him. “ _Oh_ , Eggsy.” Harry swallows. “Happy new year, my dear.”


	11. Chapter 11

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Today we have an unreasonable amount of cigarettes and Jacques-Louis David's _[Patrocle](https://66.media.tumblr.com/3cd546238289c48a1a4dab702479c9aa/tumblr_o9pj4aGVG81vvdm7qo1_1280.jpg)_.
> 
> As always thank you immensely for the comments, the kudos; and to all of you who read quietly.
> 
> Things happen here.

Harry begins what will be his fifty-seventh year with a raging headache and a sour taste in his mouth from the cheap champagne, the three cigarettes he’d stolen off Eggsy’s pack over the night, and the few drags he’d taken from the joint Eggsy had rolled after they’d finished up the champagne. Harry had watched him quietly with his heart pounding in his throat, the nimble, practiced motions of his fingers crumbling up hash and the quick little darting of his tongue licking along the seam to seal the paper. He’d watched him light up and stared as his eyelids grew heavy, his smile easy, his body sprawling further on the floor next to Harry’s tensed one.

They’d eaten biscuits, afterwards, an entire pack of Bourbon creams that had left crumbs all over the front of Eggsy’s shirt and smears of dark chocolate on his fingers, which he’d licked absently while Harry stared, again, feeling too lazy to even reach for a sketchbook. His memory did as well as the paper could have, and he thinks about it in bed that morning, lying amidst the shipwreck his drunk, drugged self has made of his bed during the night.

There’s a pillow next to his knee, and the duvet is all twisted up around his legs. It feels too warm in his bedroom, in his pyjamas, in his pounding skull. His cock is half-hard against his thigh, an uncomfortable weight troublesome in all senses of the word. Harry reaches for it anyway, feeling weak and selfish, and closes his eyes both against the familiarity of his bedroom and the morning light seeping in through the curtains.

He can feel his pulse in it, in his whole body; his cock, his head, and in between, his heart. All of it is beating for Eggsy. Harry lets his head slip away from the pillow, rests his forehead against a cool place on the mattress and strokes himself once, slowly, root to tip. It’s too dry, but his mouth is parched - he doubts licking his palm would have any effect.

He thinks of Eggsy licking his fingers, sucking the tip of them into his mouth, indolently unselfconscious, with his eyelids drooped as though pulled down by some invisible weights. Harry remembers a girl, in a painting of Lautrec, wearing nothing but black stockings and shoes with a finger sucked in between her lips. The image of an index raised over a moue to ask for secrecy. Eggsy’s fingers over the shutter button of his camera, poised to press like fingers on a trigger, ready to shoot. Eggsy’s fingers over that shutter button ready to capture secrets to be revealed in weeks’ time in the red-lit mystery of a dark room. Harry’s hand goes tight around himself, down then up to fondle the sensitive head of his cock.

Somewhere in the house Eggsy moves, upstairs or downstairs he doesn’t know, the quiet shuffle of life in Harry’s so-long empty home already so familiar. Harry’s body atop the sheets echoes a similar ruffle when his hips twist to greedily fuck his prick into his fist. He breathes, blinks, closes his eyes again.

He does not think of Eggsy’s nude body, of moles like markers on a map.

His head is pounding, the pain of it echoed down by the ache in his bollocks. Harry’s hand crawls down laboriously to cradle them. They’re a heavy weight in his hand, warm and full already. On his back the light streaming in through the window is a warm push, like a hand urging him closer into the warmth of another body. When Harry blinks the empty expanse of his bed flashes into his vision briefly, the door beyond it, firmly shut.

Last night they’d stumbled out the studio when Harry had begun nodding off, somewhere around three in the morning - into the wrecked streets, cigarette butts and broken glass and plastic cups crunching under their feet - to find a cab, Eggsy laughing with his arm around Harry and his hands pushing him into the backseat, ushering him inside the house an indeterminate amount of time later only to urge him to drink a full glass of water and then another, leaving him at his bedroom door with soft eyes and an even softer _goodnight_ whispered before he’d slinked away to his own room.

Everything about the previous night feels jumbled up, noises and smells and touches, Eggsy’s voice, smoke, that cheap aftershave, the scotch Harry had drunk, the cold glass of water in his hand after the warmth of Eggsy’s grasp when he’d pulled him inside his own house.

He breathes damply against the sheets, rubs his face into the mattress, eyes tightly shut. He needs to get a tissue. He needs to take his hand off himself and swallow the contents of an entire box of paracetamol. He needs-

Harry thinks of the twist of Eggsy’s neck as he looked over his shoulder, eyes fittingly coloured like the sea with the same power, the same force it has - and drowns amongst the shipwreck of his bed, gasping for air, hand on his cock and eyes unseeing, coming and coming until he’s left shivering and breathless.

His head pounds like someone is knocking on his skull, begging for entry or exit.

Downstairs he hears the clanking of cutlery, Eggsy making tea or breakfast, opening and closing cupboards and fridge to get honey and milk. In his stuffy bedroom Harry breathes for a long time. When he extracts himself from the sheets his body screams at him in protest, his head leading the revolt. Harry swallows two tablets of paracetamol and drinks from the tap until his empty belly is complaining against the sudden intake of water, and takes a long shower before getting dressed, head to toe, hair combed, glasses on. Then he finally opens the door and walks down the stairs.

As predicted Eggsy is there, still in his pyjamas, eating handfuls of Toffee Crisp cereal directly from the box. There’s a steaming cup of tea on the table, next to Eggsy’s cell, where he’s scrolling through text messages.

“Sleep well?” he asks when Harry comes in, getting up and getting a cup from the cupboard. When he stretches up to reach it there’s the smallest sliver of skin showing above the waistband of his trousers. Harry stares, frozen in the doorway. He watches Eggsy throw a teabag into the cup and pour water over it.

“Well enough,” Harry says, his throat dry, his voice croaky. He sits down. Eggsy’s phone vibrates, the sound absurdly loud in the small kitchen, reverberating off the surface of the table. “Did you?”

“Yeah,” Eggsy says. He leans against the counter, watches the tea get steadily darker. “You must be fucking hungover though, yeah?” He winces sympathetically. “You got pretty pissed last night, innit?”

“I’ll be fine,” Harry tells him. “How about you?”

Eggsy snorts, fishes out the teabag with his bare fingers and throws it in the bin; turns back to the cup and adds lemon, sugar, and milk.

“ _I’m_ young, Harry,” he grins. “I’ll live.”

Harry accepts the tea Eggsy hands him.

_I’m old,_ he thinks. _I’ll die._

He drinks his tea and barely tastes it.

On the fourth, first thing in the morning, Harry gets a flurry of excited and pleased-sounding emails from the people in charge at Penguin Classics. _Perfect_ , one says, _Right out of the nineteenth century_ ; _This is exactly what is expected from you_ , another writes. Elenore tells him _It’s very safe, like it has always existed, it’s wonderful_.

None of it feels like compliments.

In the afternoon, at the studio, Harry spends a long time looking at the painting. It’s good. He knows that. Good use of space and colour and light and darkness. There’s just something _missing_. It’s not finished. That must be it.

“Did he shoot your fucking dog?”

Harry looks up at that, finding Eggsy looking at the canvas from the side.

“What?”

“Dorian,” Eggsy clarifies with a nod towards the painting. “You look real angry at him.”

“I do not have a dog,” Harry tells him.

“Yeah you do. In the downstairs loo, you’ve got this creepy thing stuffed and all.”

“Mr Pickles is not creepy,” Harry says absently. “What do you think of it?”

Eggsy tilts his head to the side, narrowing his eyes to stare Dorian down. He sets two hands on Harry’s shoulder, mirroring the pose, one hand atop the other. Harry stiffens.

“It looks nice?” Eggsy says hesitantly. “I ain’t good with art. It looks like a photograph, a bit? You’re good at this. Making things look real.” There’s a minute of silence, and Harry thinks Eggsy might have said it all, but then he continues, a little awkwardly. “It don’t really look real, though. Maybe ‘cause it ain’t finished and all, but it feels… Old, you know?”

“Well, Dorian lived in the nineteenth century,” Harry begins. Next to him Eggsy gives a little snort.

“He didn’t live at all, Harry. He was this shit bloke in a book who wanted to be young forever.”

Harry frowns, a little annoyed. Dorian lived - they all did, are still living, sleeping on the pages and stirring awake in the minds of those who read their stories. It feels like a silly, childish sentiment. He doesn’t say anything.

“The portrait is not the point of the book,” Harry says, slowly. He looks at Dorian’s impervious eyes, the littlest curve of a smile on his lips, the rings gleaming at his fingers.

“It’s sort of right there in the title, though,Harry.”

“But what matters is what the portrait meant to him in the first place,” Harry insists. “His youth. His vanity. His pride. It showed him his beauty.”

“Yeah, and you’re making that portrait, ain’t you?” Eggsy asks, walking around the easel to take his place on his chair. It feels final.

“Yes,” Harry says. He looks at Dorian’s eyes again. “I guess I am.”

It feels different, after what happened over the last week, to be painting Eggsy as he did before, Dorian and his darkness, the gleaming gold rings at his fingers. The thought of them reminds Harry of the flash of gold at Eggsy’s neck, the chain he’d stored in his pocket when he undressed for Harry, showing him everything (something hot and shameful stirs in his lower belly at the thought, and Harry shifts under Dorian’s gaze) but this.

“This chain you wear,” he asks, his tone casual as can be, his eyes and paintbrush on the draping of Dorian’s jacket. “What is it?”

Eggsy doesn’t answer immediately. His hand twitches as if he wanted to reach up and touch it.

“Something,” he says.

“A present?”

“Not exactly, no,” Eggsy tells him derisively after a quick snort of laughter.

Harry leaves it at that.

A few days later he gives Eggsy the day off, because he needs to work on Dorian’s rings and does not need Eggsy’s presence for that, and sends him off to see his sister and mother or his mates. The morning of, while he finishes his tea, Harry has his copy of Wilde’s novel next to him, reading over a bit of the second chapter where he could have sworn he had penciled in some notes. Frowning, he turns the book over, staring at the pristine spine.

“I’m off, Harry,” Eggsy yells from the entryway. The door opens.

“Have a nice day,” Harry tells him. Quickly, he gets up, striding towards the front of the house. “Eggsy. Have you still got the other copy?” he asks, raising the one in his hand. “I am afraid I need some of the notes I’d written in it.”

“Yeah, sure,” Eggsy says, “it’s in the guest room, just go and get it. See you tonight, yeah?”

“Yes,” Harry answers faintly.

He has not been in the guest room since Eggsy has moved into it.

It should not feel as nerve-wracking as this - as _intrusive_ as this. This is his house. If Eggsy had something against Harry going into it, he would have said so - or he would have gotten the bloody book himself. _This is your house_ , Harry tells himself again as he climbs up the stairs, and he ignores the foolish part of himself that insists that thought is a complete lie.

The house feels very quiet, like this. Empty. Usually there’s Eggsy puttering about, cooking or watching telly, reading on the couch or playing music up in his room, or even just the quiet fire-quick tapping of his fingers on his cellphone; recently there’s the sound of his camera, the shutter clicking, the fidgeting sounds he makes fiddling with settings and changing and adjusting lenses. It reminds Harry of sitting in a room steadily growing dark as the day ends and not realising how dim the lighting had gotten until he’d turned on the lamps.

_You are an old, sentimental fool_ , he tells himself, and he opens the door to Eggsy’s room.

For a minute Harry is surprised by how little it has changed. The sheets have been changed, and there’s a bit of a mess on the floor - a shirt, inside-out, three different socks, a packet of Rizla papers, a pair of trainers - but all the changes could be undone in an hour’s time. On the floor, next to a phone charger, there’s his copy of _The Great Gatsby_ with a Sainsbury’s receipt serving as a bookmark. Harry blinks and looks around, spotting what he was looking for on the nightstand. The bed is unmade, and up close it smells like Eggsy, the cheap deodorant and aftershave he wears, cigarettes and boy musk. The pillow is still creased where he must have laid his head down to sleep, the duvet thrown to the side.

Harry wonders if Eggsy masturbated there, suddenly, and the idea of him laying there, breathless with one hand down working at his cock inside his pyjamas and the other up, perhaps, touching a nipple or stroking over his belly, sends a shock up his spine, the quick little frisson of a bad, bad thought.

He dismisses it with a shake of his head and closes his hand around his copy of _The Picture of Dorian Gray_. When he goes to leaf through it, it falls open seemingly on its own. Tucked between the pages is a postcard. 

When Harry turns it over, _Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose_ stares up at him, its sweet blues and purples so colourful against the creamy white of the pages. He picks it up, barely registers the slightly dog-eared corners, and sets it on Eggsy’s pillow. Harry’s eyes return to the book, undaring to linger once more on the sheets. His eyes fall on the page Sargent’s colours were pressed against, and the words seem to jump out at him.

_It was delightful to watch him. With his beautiful face, and his beautiful soul, he was a thing to wonder at. It was no matter how it all ended, or was destined to end._

But it matters.

Harry will never see him age. When Eggsy will be as old as he is today, Harry will be dead, or his spirit will have been lost to old age and time will have shaped his hands into useless knots. He is an old man. From this point on he will always be. In another universe maybe this wouldn’t matter so much - perhaps he wouldn’t have spent his life behind canvases, perhaps he wouldn’t feel so _old_. Harry would like to think, with romanesque sort of wistfulness usually reserved to poets, that he would have found his way to Eggsy anyway, somehow, and perhaps then curved the fingers of his hand to the strong lines of his jaw and pulled him into a kiss.

“You are a fool,” he tells the book, the bed, the postcard, and himself.

Fleetingly, when he exits Eggsy’s room, Harry glances at the door of his own bedroom and thinks about burrowing himself back into bed, for a nap or a wank. Instead he heads downstairs and drinks three fingers of whiskey while reviewing his notes before heading to the studio.

He finishes working on Dorian’s rings that day, but it doesn’t make him or the painting any better.

When he returns home, far too late, there’s food on the table and Eggsy is laying on the sofa, his phone up above his face. He glances at Harry briefly when he comes in, his lips stretching into a smile before he turns back towards his cell. He snaps a picture, types and taps for a few seconds, then swings into a sitting position, legs open wide, elbows resting on his knees.

“Good day at the studio?” he asks, looking up at Harry.

“Yes,” Harry tells him, almost automatically. He rubs his hand over his face. “Not quite, no. How about you, Eggsy?”

“Yeah, good.” His cellphone buzzes, and he snorts at it before typing something in reply to some message or another. “There’s tea on the table, the frozen lasagne shit with spinach.”

“I saw.” Eggsy raises an eyebrow at him. “Thank you,” Harry adds. He watches as Eggsy takes another selfie, eyebrow still raised. “Whatever is it with the selfies?”

“Don’t know, really,” Eggsy says, focused on his phone. “Sometimes it’s better than just typing something out. Sometimes it’s just because you’re doing something nice, you know? Like a memory. Or because you’re looking fit that day.” He laughs a little at that, glancing up at Harry for a second. “It ain’t a big deal.”

“No,” Harry says. He doesn’t think of Narcissus, painted by Waterhouse or Caravaggio or Benczúr, bent above the water captivated by the reflection of his own beauty. He thinks of Dorian, mesmerised by his youth and its power. Of Henry - oh, and how cruel is that, how cruelly _ironic_ \- taking his hand as though leading him to dance and making his head spin. Showing him a better reflection of his youth and beauty than any mirror, any artist could. Harry thinks of Dorian’s youth trapped in that one perfect picture. “No, it isn’t, really."

Harry thinks, and as he does he has one fleeting, out-of-place thought: _Perhaps you ought to_ stop _thinking_.


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Strawberry lemonade is my saving grace in this sweltering heat. Tonight we have [_The Sin_](https://67.media.tumblr.com/2fe8fa1ec56a656082b905c35a5b1ba8/tumblr_oa2erczSZH1vvdm7qo1_1280.jpg), by Franz von Stuck.
> 
> And a quote, because I love circumvoluted metaphors: _Presbyopia means literally "trying to see as old men do". It is a condition associated with aging in which the eye exhibits a progressively diminished ability to focus on near objects._ Thankfully, the young eye can see.
> 
> Deep red carnations symbolise passion, admiration, pride, and open love.

They still work on the painting.

Of course they do - Harry still doesn’t know exactly what he wants to do, and the deadline is looming dangerously above him. He’s half going mad with it and with watching Eggsy all day, every day; so when Chester’s secretary phones him with an invitation to a private viewing at the gallery, Harry accepts the distraction gladly.

He brings Eggsy along, with promises that Hesketh’s rudeness was absolutely exceptional.

“Someone’s got to watch your champagne intake anyway,” Eggsy remarks on the night of the viewing, adjusting the knot of his necktie in the mirror in the entryway. He’s wearing the Kingsman suit, his only suit - Harry wants to take him to get a dozen more made, but he has no reason to.

“I can handle myself,” Harry answers, taking a step closer and replacing Eggsy’s hands with his, deftly fixing the crooked knot. “There. Perfect.”

“I’m always perfect,” Eggsy grins.

_Yes_ , Harry wants to say. His fingers linger on the cool silk of Eggsy’s necktie, wanting to wrap around the fabric to yank him closer and kiss him, right here and there. Eggsy’s eyes flicker to his lips, and his smile softens.

And Harry knows, then.

This is that moment, in the films, in Mills and Boon novels, in the minds of daydreaming lovesick teenagers everywhere, where he leans in and kisses Eggsy, chaste until it is not, where he then pulls away just enough to say...

“We better get going,” he says.

On the cab ride to Savile Row he doesn’t watch Eggsy - his mind is replaying every bit of the last two months, Eggsy cooking dinner for him, answering all of Harry’s questions and responding to his every demand, sitting still at the sound of pencil on paper or paintbrush on canvas like it’s a Pavlovian response, sitting on the floor next to an old man instead of partying with his friends, his camera and his eyes shielded behind to watch Harry, taking off his clothes to stand as an unwrapped gift in front of Harry, offering his body to Harry’s eyes and perhaps even his hands, if he’d tried, if he’d dared…

Eggsy, eagerly and readily learning every little bit of him; lemon, sugar and milk.

It should feel like a relief, knowing this, that Eggsy wants him. It should feel like a door opening, like an ocean of possibilities. But in this crooked little house Eggsy and him have been living in, in this strange home they’ve been building, it seems the door is opening above nothing and that Harry would fall if he were to walk through it.

Once on Savile Row, in front of the tailors, Harry asks Eggsy for a cigarette.

“You nervous?” Eggsy asks, sliding his lighter back inside his torn-to-shred pack. “Ain’t even your work.”

“There _will_ be some of my work, Eggsy,” Harry tells him. “But I’m not the main event, no.”

“Aw, Harry,” Eggsy says. “You’re still my favourite.”

The cigarette doesn’t help, nor does squashing it under the heel of his shoe harder than needed.

“Who’s it then?” Eggsy asks as they walk up the stairs, footsteps muffled by the red carpet.

Harry doesn’t have time to tell him he actually does not know before they reach the gallery’s floor. On the door, above the ever-gleaming golden plaque, a glossy poster of a smiling mouth and an amused eye, a close-up of an oil painting, introduces the work of Roxanne Morton.

He should have expected it. He remembers Merlin’s words, _What ensued is confidential_. Harry had phoned him, what seems like eons ago, to ask him to reach out to Miss Morton. If he hadn’t, if Morton had refused Merlin’s legal counsel, if she hadn’t somehow become Merlin’s client, there would have been no reason for confidentiality.

And still, when Eggsy pushes the door open there she stands, gorgeous in a Kingsman suit and patent leather oxfords, a flower at her breast pocket and her wheat-gold hair like a living vanity. She’s surrounded by her paintings, hazes of beauty and cold colours bleeding here and there red or gold. It’s fitting, the silvery blue of her suit adorned with the red carnation and her crimson lipstick next to her works. Roxanne Morton is an extension of her palette, or perhaps it is instead an extension of her.

She spots him immediately, glancing to the door when it opens. Her face lights up and she makes excuses to her current company to stride over.

“Mr Hart,” Morton says, “I was hoping you would come.” Harry shakes her hand and gives her a brittle smile.

“Miss Morton, please, call me Harry. I wouldn’t have missed it for the world.” Next to him Eggsy gives a badly-concealed little snort, and Morton’s eyes flicker to him. “Eggsy Unwin. He is my model for a painting I am currently working on.”

“ _Eggy_?” Morton asks, an amused little frown pinching her brow. Eggsy stiffens, but she’s smiling and holding out her hand.

“Eggsy,” the boy clarifies.

“Roxanne Morton. But, call me Roxy,” she says resolutely. “Are you an artist as well?”

“Nah,” Eggsy tells her at the same time as Harry says, “ _Yes_. He does some wonderful film photography.”

Morton - _Roxy_ , then, apparently - nods interestedly, and Eggsy blushes a little at the back of his neck. Harry wants to nuzzle the soft skin there to feel the warmth of it.

“He’s full of it, he is,” Eggsy says. “I take some pictures, that’s all.”

“If it’s the same way Harry Hart _paints_ some pictures, I’m sure it’s very promising,” she tells him warmly. “May I see some?”

Eggsy stammers a little but pulls out his cellphone, so Harry leaves them to it andaccepts a flute of champagne from a waitress to sip on as he wanders through Roxy’s works.

He’s sure some pompous journalist would call her work _feminine_ , because of its softness. It’s all still a little young, but charmingly so, with a promise that she is destined to paint great things. Her subjects emerge from a blur, a fog at dawn, a few intricate details enough to give the portraits depth and make them striking. Most of it is fairly tame - the same sort of things Harry painted at her age, when his works filled Chester King’s gallery for the first time all these years ago - but there is a hint of _something_ a little seductive, enticing, inviting.

_Laura_ shows a woman with a blurry crown of dark hair like a bird’s nest, her golden skin looking warm and precious against a blue background. Everything about her is hazy but the very tip of three fingers, held close to her detailed lips, pale where she’s biting them to school the pull of a smile. _Char_ is a cool-toned brown woman cupping her bare head in her hands and smiling indolently, teeth gleaming as white as the white of her crinkled eyes, adorned with a fan of perfect eyelashes that look ready to bat down at any second to shield the fondness in her green eyes. _Celine_ is a white brunette with full cheeks flushed the deepest shade of pink, looking away but turning her body towards Roxy’s eyes nonetheless, dark, blurry nipples barely visible hidden as they are behind every scrape on her blushing knees detailed to perfection where they’re pulled up to her chest.

“This is the nicest Tinder history I’ve ever fucking seen,” Eggsy says.

Harry hadn’t heard him approach, and he startles a little.

“How do you mean?”

“Oh, Harry, come on,” Eggsy says, smiling and tilting his chin up to indicate _Olive_ , red-haired and freckled in tidy little constellations on her shoulder. “I don’t know how more obvious you want it to be.”

It _does_ seem obvious now that Harry thinks about it. The pictures all depict beautiful, lovingly painted women who project the exact same sort of affection they were painted and probably stroked with. It’s indecent; it’s wonderful.

“Do you think anyone else noticed?” Harry mumbles into his champagne, amused.

“These old posh gits? _Never_ ,” Eggsy drawls. “Speaking of. Where’s your stuff?”

Silently, Harry takes his elbow and leads him away. Off the main gallery, reserved for the private viewing tonight, is a smaller room where Harry does find a few of his pieces, some old, some more recent. It’s deserted, the visitors gathered amongst the lovely spills of Miss Morton’s bed.

Harry leaves Eggsy to walk slowly along the walls, his eyes darting from pictures to signs and back again.

“S’all portraits of rich white people?” Eggsy asks, frowning a little. Harry shakes his head and points him to some views of London, Paris, Madrid and Berlin he’d done almost ten year ago. “And rich cities, I get it. Where’s the cool shit?”

“The _cool shit_?” Harry parrots.

“Like the drawings you make of me. Those are nice, yeah?” Eggsy says, observing a portrait Harry had done of some local member of the elite or another. “Maybe I’m just better-looking than this lot.”

“Perhaps,” Harry says.

It feels too quiet in the small gallery, suddenly. Too small. Harry can hear the voices of the visitors, the slow murmur of it travelling down here but sounding so far away all the same. He tips his glass back and finds it empty.

“Knew I had to keep an eye on you,” Eggsy tells him, managing to sound victorious and chiding at the same time. “I’m cutting you off,” he adds, taking Harry’s flute from his hands.

Eggsy gives him a dark stare. It’s nothing like the angry eyes he’d first laid on Harry, two months and a lifetime ago. _Kenza_ in the next room, skin like brown sugar stretched over a petite body hidden in blur and hair like a mad painter’s palette, lays the same playfully reproachful eyes on Roxy, angled away from her forever on the canvas. But Eggsy is not rolling out of Harry’s bed in oils to paint his hair a tousled mess, he’s standing there, right here, alive and breathing, the finest work of art amidst Harry’s set-aside pieces.

Perhaps he knew all along. Eggsy is an open book, always has been, never made a mystery of anything. Harry wonders what kept him from _seeing_. Even now, standing in a deserted room with Eggsy at arm’s length, he does nothing.

_Do something_ , he tells himself, resolutely. _You are fifty-six, don’t act like a lovesick child._

“Eggsy?”

Roxy’s voice rings too loud in the quietness of the room. Both their heads whip around to face her, standing in the entrance with her cheeks pinked up by the champagne and the praise she has doubtlessly been fed all night.

“There you are,” she grins, “I thought you’d buggered off. I’ve got my cell, if you still want to give me your number.”

Harry takes a step back and leaves them to it, bantering quietly and typing into each other’s cellphone.

“I’ll message you the address of the other gallery I’ve got some work at,” Roxy says. “And you have _got_ to show me more of your pictures, yeah?”

“They ain’t much, Rox, swear down.”

“They are very much,” Harry interrupts. “I am awfully fond of them.” Even Eggsy looks a little surprised at that, though he recovers quickly to preen happily, standing a little taller. “Your work is incredible as well, Miss Morton. Reminiscent of some of Boldini’s finest. Rupert Alexander comes to mind as well, though there is a light in your work that reminds me of some of von Stuck’s pictures.” He quirks a little smile to add, “Though yours are no sins.”

Roxy has gone pinker with each compliment, though she still maintains impeccable composure. It’s a stark contrast to Eggsy’s obvious pleasure, the way she politely smiles and squares her shoulders, making herself tall and proud. Only the blush at her cheeks betrays her contentment.

“He’s horrible with the flattery, ain’t he?” Eggsy says, grinning at Roxy. “But honest, Rox. I don’t know shit about art, but this is fucking ace.”

She laughs, then, a lovely little sound she hides behind a raised hand. She sobers up quickly, but the wider, more genuine smile never quite leaves her lips. Harry wonders if Eggsy will take her picture. _He should_ , he thinks. He knows more than anyone that artists are rarely on the other side of the fence.

“We should let you return to your audience, Miss Morton,” Harry offers. He remembers his first exhibition, the haze of giddy joy and happiness and seeing others look at his work, how drunk he’d felt on their praise and appreciation of it. Then he recalls Roxy telling Eggsy about other works on show at a different gallery. “I believe you mentioned another exhibition, though? This is highly unusual for Chester King to approve of that sort of thing.”

Roxy tilts her head to the side, the picture of innocence, but the curve of her mouth, almost smug, _knowing_ , tells something else.

“He did not,” she says. “I have excellent legal counsel, Mr Hart.”

“I see,” Harry answers faintly. Something heavy lifts itself off his shoulders and chest. Roxy holds out her hand for a parting handshake, her back ramrod straight, the blood-red carnation on her chest like make-believe that her heart is a fragile thing within reach, with the suit like an armour underneath.

“Do not underestimate the young, Harry,” she tells him, softly. “We know what we want.”

He barely hears as she and Eggsy shake hands and make promises of texting, and walks out to give them some privacy.

In the small, dim-lit corridor leading to the main gallery, Chester King obscures the light spilling over from the room behind him as he walks towards Harry.

“Good evening, Harry,” he says. After Roxy’s firm but welcoming handshake, his is like a steel vice around Harry’s fingers.

“Chester.”

“How are you getting along with Miss Morton?” Chester asks. “Very impressive work, don’t you think? I believe I have mentioned how much she reminds me of you.”

“The comparison is extremely flattering,” Harry replies. “For me, at least. She seems very determined.” _I know_ , he wants to say. _I know she won._

“That she is,” Chester says dismissively. “The exuberance of youth. You would know, one would assume, given your young companion.” His eyes flicker behind Harry, where Roxy and Eggsy stand crowded in the entryway observing them like children playing spies. Harry wants to shield them from Chester’s eyes. “Mr Unwin, was it? Very pleased to see you again.”

“Yeah,” Eggsy says curtly.

Oh, if looks could kill. Roxy elbows him in the ribs discreetly. Chester barely suppresses a sneer.

“I trust the painting is coming along well?” Chester asks, focusing his attention back on Harry. “You know what is expected of you, Harry.”

“Yes,” Harry assures him, forcing his lips into a smile. “Yes, I know.”

Finally, after one long look, Chester turns on his heel, walking back towards the main gallery. Harry feels a hand brush his, fleetingly, before it settles at his elbow.

“C’mon, Harry,” Eggsy says. “Let’s go home.”

Once in the cab they are quiet - there is only the sound of the radio, turned down low, the _tap-tap_ of the cabbie’s fingers drumming on the steering wheel. At some point along Hyde Park, Eggsy snorts. Harry turns to look at him.

“Can’t believe you didn’t realise those were her _lovers_ ,” he says, eyes twinkling, drawing out the _o_ in _lovers_ like a sweetly mocking child.

Eggsy leans his head against the headrest of the car seat, looking at Harry with an almost-overwhelming sort of fondness, one that says _What will I ever do with you?_ Harry shakes his head self-consciously.

“In my defense, I doubt I was the only one,” he says. His lips feel dry; when he runs his tongue along the seam of them Eggsy’s eyes follow the movement before he looks back up at Harry. His eyes are dark in the dim-lit car. It feels like such a cliche, those dark, longing eyes on him, on his mouth.

How did he fucking miss it?

“You’re well oblivious, Harry, you know that?” Eggsy tells him. “Have you seen how they look at Roxy?”

He has, he really has - with their bodies and beings revealed; with their eyes shy, playful, warm, fond, _adoring_.

“And how Roxy looked at them?” Eggsy continues, voice softer, gentler. Like he’s telling secrets.

Harry has, again. He’s seen how Roxy put those details in focus, chapped lips, nibbled-on fingers, sharp teeth, eyelashes, hair, eyes, freckles.

He looks at the moles under Eggsy’s ear, the ellipsis they form, like a sentence left unfinished, open.

Always an open book, Eggsy is telling him, handing Harry the proverbial book with his heart on his sleeve, inviting him to read between the lines...

_Have you seen how I look at you?_

_I’ve seen how you look at me_.

Harry wonders just how long Eggsy has known. If he knew before Harry himself did. If Eggsy, deceived and disappointed already so many times in his young life by those meant to cherish him but still so eager for affection and attention, was just waiting to be _sure_ ; not of his own feelings but of Harry’s.

_Do not underestimate the young,_ Roxy’s voice repeats in Harry’s head, firm and sure, a warning as much as a piece of advice; Roxy with her loving eyes, showing what and who she loved and loves with colours pulled from herself as petals plucked from a flower to accompany a childish, repetitive little rhyme, _loves me, loves me not-_

_We know what we want_.

“Harry?” Eggsy asks him. He hums low in his throat in answer, unable to get his heart unstuck from it long enough to get actual words out. “Tomorrow I’ll sit for you again, like we did at Christmas, yeah?” It doesn’t really feel like his assent is needed but Harry nods nonetheless. “You’re overthinking it, that picture for the book. You need a break.”

“Alright,” Harry answers at last. It’s true. When he closes his eyes, even briefly, he sees Dorian’s cold eyes, the closed one-way look of Harry’s Galatea as shaped by his own hands.

When he opens his eyes all he sees are Eggsy’s, warm, fond, adoring.


	13. Chapter 13

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Watermelon for me and for you lot, [_The Sculptor_](https://67.media.tumblr.com/a8a297a3b9093fa8e17d862fe48ccc5f/tumblr_oaf6s9srLB1vvdm7qo1_1280.jpg) by John Kosh, 1964, on view at the Brooklyn Museum.
> 
> Eggsy's cologne, _Booster_ by Lacoste, has been borrowed from my very good friend Celine's basket of headcanons. Thank you!
> 
> Here's lucky number thirteen.

When they go home after the viewing, they make dinner together, mushrooms in cream and port over chicken and rice, working side by side. Harry shows Eggsy how to avoid crowding the mushrooms so they can brown properly, and how to cook the cream long enough for the alcohol in the port to evaporate. It’s woefully domestic, all of it, Eggsy setting a hand at his hip to make him scoot out of the way when he opens the cutlery drawer or stabbing the chicken to make sure it’s cooked through, still in his slacks and shirt with his jacket and tie left somewhere in the living room, his shirtsleeves rolled up to his elbows. They keep slipping down. It’s maddening.

“There,” Harry tells him, leaning in and unrolling Eggsy’s shirtsleeve. He smoothes out the creases. “Flip the cuff, pull it up inside-out until it sits just below your elbow, _then_ fold the bottom portion back over it,” he explains. “It will hold better and not crease as much.”

“Thanks,” Eggsy says, visibly amused. He watches Harry do the second one as well. “Always a gentleman, ain’t you.”

Harry adjusts the cuff peeking out from under the fold and rubs his thumb absently over a spot where he knows Eggsy has one large, dark beauty mark, sitting over well-developed muscle. He can feel the heat of his skin through the smooth fabric.

“Not always,” he answers.

Eggsy quirks a little smile at that and raises an eyebrow, half challenge and half disbelief.

“Tomorrow,” Eggsy says. He pauses for a bit, when the cream starts bubbling, turns to the stove to stir it and keeps his eyes on the pan afterwards. “Don’t be.”

It’s the shyest, most obvious invitation Harry has ever seen. It hangs heavy in the air between them, this space between them where there is usually canvas or paper to fence them off.

“I think everything might be ready,” Harry says.

He wonders if _he_ is.

That night in bed it takes him a long time to fall asleep. He left the curtains open and the streetlights are casting long shadows in his bedroom, softly edged in the low light. Beyond the stretch of emptiness on the other side of the bed, behind two doors and two walls, Eggsy is probably curled up in bed, eyelashes brushing the warm fabric of his pillow whenever he blinks or shifts. Everything is quiet.

They could end this right now, Harry knows. He could get up, cross the hallway and knock on Eggsy’s door, wait either for the shuffle of bedsheets and bare footsteps or a soft _Yeah?_ sleepily spoken from the bed. He could join Eggsy, in this guest bed that only is one in name, push him back against the pillows and kiss him, slip his hands under Eggsy’s pyjamas, kiss him, kiss him, over and over - at this point he’s rather sure Eggsy would let him, would welcome him, kiss back as eagerly as he does anything and bare his throat for Harry’s lips and fingers the way he bares everything else for him.

But Eggsy has set _rules_ , of sorts, held out a hand for Harry to take during this weird dance they were doing around each other; and Harry would loathe to take his wrist instead.

So Harry turns over, stares at the window instead of the door, and goes to sleep.

The next morning is eerie in its familiarity- he wakes up, showers, shaves, gets dressed, and goes downstairs like he does every day. It occurs to him somewhere on the stairs that Eggsy hasn’t ever seen him in his pyjamas, that the most dishevelled he has ever seen Harry is drunk and mauldin sitting on the floor on New Year’s Eve.

_What can he possibly want from an old man like you?_ a voice says snidely in Harry’s head. He shushes it with a push of the button on the ansaphone, and the familiar droning of voices.

“Bad night?” Eggsy asks him when Harry enters the kitchen. He’s sitting cross-legged on a chair, toast and marmalade in front of him, but he gets up when Harry walks in. “You look like you didn’t sleep too good.”

“Preoccupied, that’s all,” Harry says, watching Eggsy retrieve a cup and a teabag for him.

“Come here,” Eggsy tells him, a little brusquely, leaving the tea to steep.

He doesn’t wait for Harry to move, just takes two steps and folds him in his arms. It’s a little awkward, getting embraced by someone he has thirty-two years, four inches, and a very juvenile crush on.

It’s a little bit of very nice.

Eggsy smells like soap and cheap deodorant and his cologne, an apparently relatively new addition to his morning routine; citrus and spice and peppermint, fresh, clean and boyish. His hair is soft where it tickles Harry’s freshly-shaved chin, just the slightest bit damp. He can feel it in the crook of his neck, where Eggsy has laid down his head on Harry’s shoulder, a nice, heavy weight there. The flat palms of his hands are two warm, comforting spots on Harry’s back, pressing just enough to keep him in place.

They’ve never been this close. Side by side, yes, in taxis or in the kitchen - but he’s never held Eggsy in his arms like this. He could turn his head and nuzzle Eggsy’s ear, find the three little moles with the tip of his nose and then with his mouth. Eggsy would let Harry lead him back upstairs - or might even be the one to push Harry up the staircase with a kiss for every step, every day he has been waiting…

“Tea’s gonna oversteep,” Eggsy mumbles against his shoulder. He pats Harry’s back gently, once, twice. “Better?” he asks before stepping away.

Had Harry turned to poetry in place of painting he would be pressed to find words to describe the empty space left around him now that Eggsy has moved away from him - instead he thinks of unfinished paintings, of the spaces of white canvas surrounded by colourful and detailed areas.

“Of course,” Harry tells him. “Thank you, Eggsy.”

“You overthink everything,” Eggsy says while he fixes Harry’s tea for him, lemon, sugar, milk. “Maybe stop doing that.”

“Of course,” Harry repeats, watching as Eggsy sets his cup in front of him and slides two slices of toast across the table, then Harry’s tub of Benecol. He stares at it for a few seconds. “Pass the marmalade, would you?”

Eggsy whistles mockingly, but hands him the jar of Tiptree and a knife anyway. Under the table, his bare foot presses against Harry’s shinbone for a second, then the tip of his toes drag down the length of it to his ankle, the most fleeting little touch. Eggsy’s foot settles on his, over his socks and slippers, and stays there for the remainder of breakfast.

Later, Eggsy goes back upstairs to get dressed and comes back down in trackies and a tee-shirt, loose-fitting clothes that will not leave marks on his body. The preparation of it - the idea that Eggsy might have thought about it, naked in front of the wardrobe, makes Harry a little light-headed, a little breathless.

_He wants this as much as you do,_ he repeats in his head, like a mantra. _You are fifty-six. You are not getting the wrong idea. He has made it abundantly clear. Don’t overthink it._

Harry has experience. He’s done the song and dance before, in school with fellow students, hiding in empty rooms and dark alleys for a snog, knocking knees on Queer Street pubs - there’s no reason for it all to feel so foolish, to think so much about it. He’s had partners, for a night or a year, or less or more. He’s been in love and out of it. He has grown up and grown old hand in hand with men, even for a short while.

Eggsy will not grow old with him.

And that is all Harry will ever do.

_Don’t overthink it_.

But he can’t not, can he? It’s right there. Every day, every part of them - the grey hair at his temples next to Eggsy’s full head of wheat-gold hair, the wrinkly skin of his neck and the taut expanse of smooth skin stretched over Eggsy’s Adam’s apple, the way Eggsy throws himself at everything with the recklessness of youth - and Harry would love for it to be as simple as Eggsy not having lived enough years yet, but he’s seen him bruised and beaten, he’s seen the sort of people life had thrust at Eggsy before. He is someone who has quite literally fallen seven times and stood up eight. He is perfection made into a boy, youth and beauty wrapped in bones and skin, an ideal, Harry’s Galatea.

Harry is an old man with a dead dog and paintings people stopped wanting fifteen years ago.

_Don’t overthink it._

He looks out the window the whole cab ride and stays quiet with his thoughts and Eggsy not three feet away. On St Matthew’s Row the building seems daunting, their footsteps too loud in the staircase. Outside it’s sunny, the white, cold sort of sunlight brought on by cloudless skies in winter. The light is spilling in through the windows, drawing checkerboards on the floors of the studio, on the raised area where Eggsy’s chair resides under all of Harry’s lights

The familiarity of it is comforting, in a way. Watching Eggsy shed his clothes slowly while Harry gets himself situated on his chair with a sketchbook and pencils gives him the most jarring sense of deja-vu. They’ve been here before, just a few weeks and a lifetime ago. Everything feels different now - everything _is_. There were many things he did not know that first time, when Eggsy started taking off his clothes in front of him, _for_ him. This time he doesn’t ramble, doesn’t hesitate, drops trou and stands in front of Harry impervious and imperious in all the ways Dorian is not.

Eggsy is not emerging from a seashell or carrying a slingshot - he is not made of oils and marble, he is right there and for Harry’s eyes only.

Harry is not sure he will ever be able to stop comparing Eggsy to a work of art - because he _is_ one - but now he watches him and finds in the curves of his torso places to fit his hands on, in his obliques a spot to slot his thumb, in his thigh a birthmark he would put his lips on. The Eggsy that lives and has lived in his head for the past months, the one he drew these first times in the sketchbook still sitting on the side table of his drawing room, the one he thought of the first morning of the year after too much liquor and his hand down his pyjamas; this Eggsy is always dressed, sleeves down to his wrist and shirt collar to his jugular notch.

Nude, Eggsy is Harry’s Galatea, art in its purest form, and it has been so easy not to think about it, to only look at him the way Harry looked at models in school, at the _Odalisque_ in the Louvre or even at the _Swimming Hole_ at the Amon Carter.

“Eggsy”, Harry asks. It takes him a few seconds to gather his thoughts. They don’t usually talk when Harry is working, other than offers of heating and breaks. “Why did you do it, the first time?”

Eggsy doesn’t move. His mouth curls into a little smile, barely there. Harry hurries to sketch it, like he’s afraid it will disappear.

“Honest?” The smile doesn’t go away. “I wanted to see how you’d react. What you was gonna do.”

“What did you think I was going to do?”

“Have a heart attack,” Eggsy deadpans. When Harry glances up at him his smile manages look fond and mischievous at the same time. “Kiss me, maybe.”

That had been the last thing on Harry’s mind that day. He sketches the strong lines of Eggsy’s thighs (he could hoist them over his shoulders, or grab them to haul Eggsy close to him and fit his cock between them) and the knobs of his knees (on the ground, on bedsheets, under his mouth). He secretly delights in the tiniest twitch his eyes elicit when they land on Eggsy’s prick, soft between his thighs (soft and hot under his hands, hardening; then hard and leaking in his mouth, his arse).

“Why didn’t you?” Eggsy asks. “Kiss me, I mean. Not just that day. All of them.”

Harry doesn’t answer immediately. He focuses on Eggsy’s toes (pressed against his back, his legs; in his mouth) for a moment. When he speaks, he schools his voice into something sure, something strong.

“You are twenty-four,” he tells Eggsy. It feels strange to say. He’s always thought of it as himself being too old, not Eggsy being too young. “I am fifty-six.”

“So?”

When Harry looks up Eggsy looks entirely unbothered by the fact. His eyebrows are raised expectantly, like he’s waiting for whatever argument Harry has prepared, for whatever kept Harry away from him.

“I am thirty-two fucking years older than you, Eggsy,” Harry insists. It’s almost frustrating, Eggsy playing blind like this, like it’s not obvious.

“ _So_?” Eggsy repeats, insolent, casual. “I can do maths.”

“When you are as old as I am, I will be dead, or worse,” Harry says. He’s not drawing anymore.

“Harry, you’ll be dead long before that,” Eggsy tells him slowly. “Have you seen how you drink? Or you’ll find another cute chav to stalk. Or maybe I’ll get bored of you. Who fucking knows?” He shrugs, carelessly. “You really ain’t gonna do shit because of something that won’t happen for thirty years?”

It’s quiet, for a moment. Harry stares at his sketchbook, at Eggsy emerging from smooth paper. Silently, pensively, he sketches the dark little peaks of his nipples (under his fingers and lips and teeth) and the short ladder of his ribs (against his, shaped for his hand to rest against).

“You have your whole life ahead of you. You could be anything you want. You are young and brilliant, Eggsy. You could have anything you want.”

“And you can’t?” Eggsy asks brazenly. “I _know_ what I want.”

_Don’t underestimate the young_ , Roxy says in Harry’s head, her eyes in Harry’s and on a myriad of beautiful ladies. _We know what we want._

“I had what I wanted,” Harry says, blinking at the sketchbook. “When I was your age, I got everything I could ever wish for, and look where I am now. A sad old man whose work the public is slowly but surely losing interest in.”

“ _Harry_ ,” Eggsy tells him, “Don’t you think maybe _you_ ’ve lost interest?” He’s quiet for a beat. Harry sketches Eggsy’s lips, full and dark (on his, on his skin) and wishes he could sketch the words behind them.“ _I_ ’m interested. And I reckon you are too, yeah? How many times do I have to show you my cock before you do something?”

That makes Harry stop, the lead of his pencil on Eggsy’s throat, penciling in the dark mole there, the promise of it, the way Eggsy’s body invites and seduces Harry on its own.

“Why ain’t you kissing me now?”

Every argument in Harry’s mind has been at the same time carelessly and carefully trampled by Eggsy himself. He thinks of Eggsy last night, shirtsleeves pulled up, the first time Harry revealed Eggsy’s skin on his own. _Don’t be a gentleman_. He thinks of Eggsy’s body, always covered, always hiding; of Eggsy now, naked and offering himself not only to Harry’s eyes but to his touch.

“Get dressed,” Harry tells him tersely.

Eggsy frowns but complies, collects shorts and socks and trousers and puts them on, slips on his tee-shirt before reaching inside his pocket for the gold chain he’d placed there earlier, sneaking it under his shirt before Harry can see it and fastening the clasp deftly. When Harry still doesn’t move he puts on his jacket, as well, and stands there on the platform, waiting.

Harry gets up.

He walks towards Eggsy, watches him as realisation slowly dawns on him. Eggsy pinches his lips, licks them, once. When they’re face to face, Eggsy raises his chin, a little, a habit when faced with risk. The raised area gives Eggsy maybe six inches, leaves him with his mouth level with Harry’s eyes and his own eyes looking down at him.

“Wait,” Eggsy says, small and soft, and he steps down into Harry’s space; Galatea leaving her pedestal once given life to, turning soft and warm.

Eggsy tilts his head to the side, inviting, wondering, waiting.

Harry cups his jaw in one hand and sets the other on his shoulder before leaning in slowly to kiss the three little moles under Eggsy’s left ear. He feels more than he hears Eggsy breathe out, a little shakily. Under his lips the skin is soft and warm. When he leans away Eggsy doesn’t move - remains silent and still as Harry angles his head gently to press his mouth to the mole on the right side of Eggsy’s jaw, at its sharpest point. In his arms Eggsy breathes. Harry slots his thumb softly in his jugular notch to invite him to tilt his head up and allow him to kiss the maddening mark over his Adam’s apple, with as much reverence as the others, as a courtier kissing his prince. Under his lips he feels Eggsy swallow thickly, his pulse hammering under the skin.

In the quiet studio Harry feels anyone could hear the similar thudding of his heart, Eggsy’s deep, controlled breathing, the soft noises of his lips kissing Eggsy’s skin, the whisper of his hands as they move over Eggsy. So close he can see every touch of blue and brown in Eggsy’s green eyes, every freckle on his nose, the glint of the chain around his neck, the frayed collar of his shirt. He has a small, almost invisible freckle on his bottom lip.

So Harry leans back in and kisses it, too.


	14. Chapter 14

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Coke, sweat, chocolate tarts and a golden tart: _[Naked Young Man](https://67.media.tumblr.com/e1440339694aea63985204ca6ffbb9c9/tumblr_oas2v2lMTx1vvdm7qo1_1280.jpg)_ by Konstantin Somov (1937)
> 
> Thank you again for every comment, every kudo, every subscription, every quiet read. <3

Once he starts kissing Eggsy, Harry finds he can’t bring himself to stop.

Under his lips and his hands Eggsy is as eager as ever, mouth moving against Harry’s and fingers buried in the short hair at the back of his head. He keeps making pained little sounds in the back of his throat, and Harry can understand: it feels good like an ache soothed, like hunger sated, like thirst quenched; but still so insufficient. It feels like the first mouthfuls of a feast after having starved himself.

“You have to tell me to stop, Eggsy,” Harry mumbles against his lips, a hand splayed over his back and the other still curved over his neck.

“Stop yourself,” Eggsy groans. He kisses him again. “You’ve no idea how long I wanted this.”

“Tell me.”

Harry kisses Eggsy’s neck, the sharp lines of his jaw, then the mole at his throat again. When Eggsy speaks he feels the words vibrate there.

“When you tried to fight Rottie and all at the pub,” he says, “I thought I might wanna fuck you. You’re a fit sort, Harry, you’ve no idea.” He breathes when Harry noses up the side of his neck. “Then when you drew me the first time.” He laughs, a warm little thing Harry feels against his lips. “You were so fucking obvious about it.”

It should make Harry feel bad, make him regret not doing anything sooner - but had he known, he’s all too sure he wouldn’t have done anything anyway. Instead it makes something prickle under his skin, like electricity, makes his cock chub up demandingly in his trousers. When Harry angles his hips away from Eggsy, he just pushes closer, slotting a thigh between Harry’s legs and raising on the tip of his toes to press his erection against Harry’s.

He had forgotten, somehow, how good it felt to have a hard cock pressed up against his, with the knowledge he was the one to make it fat and needy in the first place. His own prick is halfway there, hopefully hardening with every clumsy jerk of Eggsy’s hips against his.

“We should go home,” he tells Eggsy’s collarbone.

“You want to sit in a cab for thirty minutes right now?” Eggsy says shakily. “I ain’t doing that without nutting first.”

Harry had had a partner, eons ago, who liked to tell him in great and loud detail about how he was _going to spunk_ while bollocks-deep inside his arse. It had always made him feel vaguely nauseous, the unsexy sort of dirty that left him feeling embarrassed more than aroused.

It’s ridiculous, still. But Eggsy sounds a little breathless, his accent a bit thicker, and all it makes Harry want to do is make him come.

“Tell me what you want,” he tells Eggsy, face buried inside his neck. It’s a bit awkward, what with Eggsy being shorter than him, but he smells so _good_ there that he can’t really bring himself to move away. “Anything, Eggsy.”

“Ain’t ever said no to a blowjob,” Eggsy tells him around a laugh and a blush spreading over his cheeks from the reddened back of his neck. “If you want to.”

Harry would like to believe he dropped to his knees with the desperate grace of the very willing, but instead he lowers himself down slowly, one knee at a time. All of a sudden he feels dreadfully old again.

“Don’t fuck yourself up,” Eggsy tells him, which does not really help.

“ _Eggsy_ ,” Harry warns him once he is situated on his knees.

“A’ight,” Eggsy says lightly, his tone casually dismissive. He raises his hands in defense. “This’ll be over in a minute, anyway.”

That. That does not make Harry feel old.

Eggsy’s eyelids flutter shut as soon as Harry leans closer to nose at his cock through the soft material of his trackies, which is a bloody shame. Up close like this, though, Harry can smell his cock, musk and sweat, and his mouth fills with saliva. He reaches up to stroke the bulge tenting the fabric, learning the shape of Eggsy through two thin layers of clothing. Above him Eggsy moans, a low sound from deep inside his throat, his thighs shaking when Harry’s questing fingers find the head of his cock.

“Harry,” Eggsy says tightly, “I ain’t joking.”

It’s a bit too flattering, really - it makes heat rush up Harry’s spine then roundtrip down to his bollocks. He leans away to pull Eggsy’s trousers and shorts down a few inches, enough to let his hard prick tumble out. He’s _actually_ not joking - his cockhead is wet with precome, his bollocks tight and full. Harry stares. Eggsy has the prettiest, rosiest cock, plump and delightfully squat and stout. When Harry takes him in hand and pulls the foreskin down to let the glans pop out, his fist leaves a nice mouthful available for the taking - so take he does, sucks in the head of Eggsy’s prick and fits it against his soft palate. He takes a minute to savour it, the smooth, slick flesh against the inside of his mouth; then pulls back enough to tongue at the slit on the spongy head. Above him Eggsy gives a garbled mess of a moan.

“Shit fuck hell,” he says, and he comes.

His hips jerk back when he does, leaving his cock to plop out of Harry’s mouth after spilling half his load into it. Harry makes a surprised little sound in the back of his throat. His fist tightens around Eggsy’s cock, giving him a tight little tunnel to thrust into as Harry swallows down a cough and his load in the same breath.

“Oh fucking hell,” Eggsy says, his cheeks crimson, his hips twitching reflexively to try to feed his cock into both Harry’s fist and his mouth. The glans brushes over Harry’s lips, wet and silky. “Harry, I’m bloody sorry.”

Harry can’t help it - he laughs, a short little huff of giddiness, stroking Eggsy’s spit-slick cock until he stops him with a hand around his wrist. Harry tucks him back in, going as far as tying the drawstring of his trackies into a neat little bow. When he raises his knees and hips scream at him, as expected.

“This don’t ever happen to me,” Eggsy tells him fiercely, tucking himself into Harry’s arms again and nosing under his collar, breathing slowly and deeply. Harry pets his hair, his shoulders, the length of his spine. “Fucking embarrassing.”

“Flattering, rather,” Harry corrects in a low voice, stroking over every knob of Eggsy’s spine. In his trousers his own prick is hard, and when Eggsy shifts his thigh ends up pressed up against it. He stills, tenses up, then relaxes.

“Take me home,” he whispers against Harry’s skin.

The cab ride is made of the sort of torture the Greeks wrote about.

Eggsy and him sit studiously apart, silent, the middle seat a vast emptiness between them. The cabbie keeps glancing at them curiously in the rearview mirror. _What is he thinking?_ Harry keeps wondering - is his erection as obvious as it seems? Has he noticed the dark blush smeared on Eggsy’s cheeks? Can he tell Eggsy came in his mouth fifteen minutes ago?

Harry can still taste his come in his mouth.

He’s so focused on it all that he doesn’t notice his cellphone is vibrating in his breast pocket, and when he does he has three texts and a missed call from one minute ago - all from Eggsy.

_Im returnin the favour whn we get home_

_If thats cool_

_Are u ignorin me or._

Harry looks up sharply as soon as he reads the texts, then glances at Eggsy out the corner of his eye, finds him studiously staring out the window with his phone in his hand and his ears vermillion. It should feel sordid, this whole affair, receiving that sort of messages in the back of a taxi from a young man less than half his age. It feels pleasantly dirty, instead, the way it felt when a past boyfriend had sent him a postcard from - from Madrid or Barcelona, Harry can’t remember, it was ages ago; an innocent postcard detailing the scenery and the heat but posted in an envelope that, once torn open, had revealed hasty scribbles on its inside detailing all the things he intended to do to Harry’s arse as soon as he got back.

Next to it, Eggsy’s messages look shy and chaste.

_Yes_ , Harry texts back. Then, as an afterthought, he types _To your proposal. Not to ignoring you._ He hears Eggsy’s phone buzz, his quiet little snort. The cabbie pushes a few buttons to change the radio station. Eggsy types on his phone, the tapping of his fingers quick and practiced.

_I wanna fuck you smtime_

_Today?_ Harry texts back. His fingers are trembling a little. Something is tying his insides into knots. _Fifty-six_ , he tells himself. _Get a hold of yourself._

_If you want_ , Eggsy replies; then: _I wqnt tp._

Out the corner of his eye Harry sees him fidget on his seat. He wonders if Eggsy is hard right now, if his spent cock has recovered greedily at the thought of fucking him, if Eggsy will come in his arse as quick as he came in his mouth.

He doesn’t text anything back.

When they reach the quiet cul-de-sac Harry is quick to hand the cabbie a few notes, dismissing his change when the man goes to count it out. He raises an eyebrow at him and snorts. Harry doesn’t spare him a second look, just gets out of the taxi and stalks up to the white house at the end with Eggsy on his heels. His knees still hurt a little. It feels mad, all of it, the whole morning and the scrambling to find his key and open the door, and it leaves him reeling in the hallway while Eggsy shuts the door behind them.

“Yes,” Harry says belatedly. “Eggsy, yes.”

“Yeah?” he answers breathlessly around a wicked grin. “Come on then.”

Harry lets himself be led up the stairs of his own house and pushed back against the wall of the landing to be thoroughly kissed as Eggsy boldly grabs two big handfuls of his arse and digs his hard cock into his thigh. The walk up the last flight of stairs is spent stepping on each other’s toes. They abandon their shoes somewhere in the last few steps. It feels juvenile; it hasn’t been like this with any man for ages.

There’s an awkward second in the middle of the hallway, where they stand between their two rooms blinking at each other, until Eggsy pulls him inside his bedroom. Like the other day, the bed is undone and there is a small mess on the floor - Eggsy just kicks a lone trainer out of the way carelessly before sitting on the bed and pulling Harry down with him.

It’s easy, easier perhaps, in Eggsy’s bedroom where everything smells like him. Harry breathes and lets Eggsy roll him over to straddle his thighs as he kisses his neck and undoes his tie, clumsy fingers slipping over the silk.

“Why did you wear a fucking suit,” Eggsy groans against his throat.

“It’s an armour,” Harry answers without really meaning to, without really knowing what it means. He pulls his necktie off nonetheless, starts on the buttons at his collar as Eggsy untucks his shirt from his trousers in quick little pulls with his hands fisted in the fabric. Then he unbuttons the rest of Harry’s shirt and pushes his hands out of the way gently, one hand circling each of Harry’s wrists. Eggsy looks at him for a second and leans down to kiss his hands, his lips soft and plush over Harry’s knuckles, his fingertips.

“You ain’t wearing gloves though, ever,” he says, small and fond and just a little bit mischievous when he kisses Harry’s little finger on his right hand. “Can see right through those,” he continues, dropping Harry’s hands and leaving him free to rake his fingers through Eggsy’s hair, eliciting a content little sound from the back of his throat. “They give you away.”

“When I touch you?” Harry asks, low, almost hushed.

“When you draw me,” Eggsy corrects him. “And I mean _me._ ”

And then he stops speaking.

Harry watches quietly as Eggsy leans further down to kiss at his collarbones, his chest, his sternum. One of his hands comes up to tease a nipple while the other curves over the shape of his ribcage. He doesn’t comment on the grey hair pepperring Harry’s chest, the wrinkles on his neck, the softness in his stomach; just keeps kissing him quietly with his eyes closed.

Eggsy does look up to gauge his reaction when he closes his lips around one of Harry’s nipples, sucking it in and coaxing it into hardness with gentle little flicks of his tongue.

“It feels nice,” Harry breathes, closing his eyes in turn against the heat in Eggsy’s expectant gaze. “But they have never been very sensitive, I’m afraid.”

“Yeah?” Eggsy asks, pulling off with a soft smack to brush the tip of his nose over Harry’s nipple, his lips moving against the hairy skin underneath. “Mine are.”

It sounds awfully promising, but so does the way Eggsy has been crawling steadily lower and lower, until Harry finds him laying down on his belly between the vee of his spread legs. His fingers are still buried in Eggsy’s hair.

Eggsy doesn’t look at him as he unbuckles Harry’s belt and unzips his fly, just stares at his crotch intently. He doesn’t tease like Harry did earlier, just undoes all the fastenings quickly and quietly before pulling Harry’s cock out with little ceremony. He does glance up, then, and quirks a little smile at Harry before returning to the task at hand. He’s a nymph, between Harry’s legs, a siren with her mouth open and ready to wreck him.

And wreck he does - Eggsy has no finesse and very little technique, sucks him in immediately with a loud, unashamed sound that is terribly lewd in the quiet bedroom. Harry can’t move, can’t speak, just stares at the steady bobbing of Eggsy’s head without really seeing it. His mouth is impossibly wet, like he’s been drooling at the idea of getting Harry’s cock in it, the same way his cockhead was soaked after just a few kisses and a few touches. Harry wonders how many men Eggsy has been with, if he sucked them with the same eagerness, if he _wanted_ to as much as he seems to right now.

“You’re a bit quiet,” Eggsy tells him when he pulls off to mouth at Harry’s bollocks. “Tell me what you like, yeah?”

“This,” Harry says when Eggsy returns to his cock, licks up the underside and closes his lips around the head. “You.” He breathes, breathes, breathes. “You feel divine.” Eggsy moans encouragingly around him, sinks lower - too low, and chokes a little when his throat flutters around Harry’s cock. He pulls off to cough a few times, fisting Harry’s prick and wanking him off slowly before returning, gentler and slower. “I like being fucked.”

“Yeah?” Eggsy mumbles around the head of his cock, cracking one eye open to look at him. “We can do that.” He gives Harry’s prick a parting suck before sitting up on his knees. “You got lube and shit?”

“In my bathroom,” Harry says, propping himself up on one elbow.

“Don’t move, I’ll go,” Eggsy tells him, rolling out the bed easily. “Give us a kiss and get naked,” he mumbles, already pushing his mouth against Harry’s.

As he walks away he pulls off his tee-shirt, throwing it inside-out on the floor, and Harry sees a flash of gold before Eggsy disappears into the hallway. He busies himself with getting rid of his clothes, feeling dazed, and sits back down after folding his trousers and shirt. They are already wrinkled where they’ve been pushed up or down.

When Eggsy returns he has the bottle of lube in one hand and a condom in the other, which he holds up with a wrinkle of his nose.

“Didn’t even think to wrap it before I sucked you,” he says apologetically as he sheds his trackies and socks and shorts before crawling back into bed.

“I haven’t been with anyone in some time,” Harry tells him. “I am afraid I forgot as well.”

“Won’t forget this time,” Eggsy promises, and he kisses Harry again.

From then on it’s clear what’s about to happen soon, and the anticipation makes Harry’s skin prickle and his arsehole clench in anticipation. His underarms are damp with sweat and his heart is thudding in his chest. Eggsy’s cock is rubbing against his, promisingly hard, and he keeps making low noises of appreciation into Harry’s mouth as he rocks lazily against him.

“Eggsy,” Harry murmurs.

“Yeah,” he says. “Yeah, alright.”

There’s an adorable look on concentration on Eggsy’s face as he smears what is probably too much lube on two fingers. His brow is pinched with it, his bottom lip sucked halfway into his mouth. Harry wants to kiss to out. He can’t resist it when Eggsy strokes over his hole, pressing without going in yet. It feels amazing, his fingers carefully massaging the tender skin there, his mouth absently kissing back, his eyes roaming over Harry’s face and chest when they part. He looks down at his fingers when he slides them inside smoothly, his lips parted. It feels amazing, and Eggsy looks _amazed_.

“Hot as fuck,” he breathes, “inside, I mean. Outside too though,” he adds with a glance at Harry and a crooked smile. “Can I fuck you?”

“ _Yes_ ,” Harry groans. “Please.”

He lets Eggsy put the condom on himself and smear some more lube over Harry’s hole, watches him get ready with his hands shaking just a little, his breath coming out just a little too loudly. When he puts a hand on Harry’s hip his fingers are sticky with lube and his grip just a touch too hard. Soon enough Harry feels Eggsy’s cockhead nudge against his hole as Eggsy fits himself inside, closes his eyes at the stretch of it, the goodness of being fucked; opens them to watch Eggsy again.

“This good?” Eggsy asks tightly, grinding gently into his arse. Harry nods.

“Perfect,” he says. Eggsy looks at him, eyes big and wanting, lips kiss-reddened. When his eyes flutter shut and he cranes his head back towards the ceiling Harry props himself up on his elbows to kiss the mole on his throat. “Perfect.”

Eggsy moans in agreement, pulling out before pushing back in, slowly; and then again faster, and again. Harry knows he’s quiet during sex, always has been, but Eggsy makes enough noise for the both of them: deep little grunts in counterpoint to the slap of skin against skin, high whines when he notices Harry palming his cock or when Harry pushes him down to kiss his neck, his ear, his jaw. He can’t stop touching Eggsy, really, pushing back against his thrusts even as his hips start to ache, kissing him even when neither of them can focus on doing more than mashing their mouths together. It feels like a last meal.

“I might come soon,” he tells Eggsy when he shifts his hips and the angle makes him nail Harry’s prostate on every thrust. He’s holding his cock, the sticky head cradled in his palm, but whenever he starts stroking himself it feels too intense, too much. “Keep going,” he says when Eggsy makes a questioning sound.

Slowly he starts to wank himself off, his fist loose around his prick, his eyes fixed on Eggsy’s face. Eggsy himself keeps alternating between watching Harry’s face and his cock and the slide of his own inside Harry’s arse, apparently torn between where to look.

In the end he leans in and kisses Harry deeply, his thrusts erratic, moaning into his mouth when Harry’s fist rubs over his belly as it moves over his cock. Harry’s grip tightens when he feels himself start to come, both his hand around his own cock and his arse around Eggsy’s. It makes Eggsy choke a little, his hips stuttering as he loses his rhythm and his wits and spills inside the condom, grinding into Harry’s arse, his lips shaping soundless words and cries over Harry’s mouth. His face has gone bright red, and when he hides it into Harry’s neck it feels too hot, almost uncomfortably so, but he curls his arms around Eggsy nonetheless.

It takes a long time for everything to feel real again.

At some point Eggsy moves away to pull out and disappears to the bathroom to take the condom off, and Harry stares at the blank ceiling and focuses on breathing. His heart is hammering in his chest like a caged bird trying to fly out of a cage.

“Don’t freak out now,” Eggsy mumbles when he returns and burrows next to Harry again, looking lazy and spent. “Let me have a kip first.”

“Alright,” Harry says tightly, and he watches as Eggsy gets comfortable, his skin mottled pink, his hair in disarray. His heart won’t slow down. “May I borrow a cigarette?”

“Fucking cliche,” Eggsy snorts. “Go ahead.”

Harry brushes a kiss to Eggsy’s forehead then to his lips when he makes the effort of raising his head before shuffling out of bed. His hips ache. His arse feels loose and wet. His skin feels sticky with sweat and come. It feels awfully like a walk of shame, sitting quietly on the side of the mattress to put his pants on. He has no idea what time it is. He wonders what will happen when Eggsy wakes up, if he’ll realise this was a mistake and promptly walk out. Harry wonders if he will realise it himself.

On the floor he finds Eggsy’s trackies, and palms the pockets for his pack of cigarettes. When he reaches in to retrieve it, though, something clatters to the floor with it. Something gold. Harry sets the pack down on the nightstand and kneels to the floor. He can’t believe his eyes. The chain pools inside his cupped palm like a cool stream of water when he lets go of it, brought down by the weight of the ring hanging down from it.

_You’ve no idea how long I wanted this_ , brash, proud Eggsy says in his head.

Harry thumbs absently at the spot on his little finger, on his right hand, where he wore the signet ring every day for the past three decades. He thinks of Eggsy, every day, with the ring hidden away under polo shirts and tees, just _waiting_.

“D’you find it?” Eggsy asks sleepily. “You leaving?”

“Yes,” Harry says thickly. He watches the light play on the gold. “No. I’m not going anywhere.”


	15. Chapter 15

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apologies for being a day late - I had much more pressing matters to attend.
> 
> All the bourbon creams in the world and very much a classic: _[Cain](https://67.media.tumblr.com/007fc7fc3af93110c6b2d6a0dede5b0e/tumblr_ob69vnXFcP1vvdm7qo1_500.jpg)_ by Wilhelm von Glöden, 1911. Glöden is known for his nudes of Sicilian boys, for the way he turned them into statuesque perfection with the aid of makeup and costumes and props, erasing every perceived flaw.

Harry wakes sometime in the early evening, the light gone blue-grey in the bedroom, to Eggsy wriggling out of his embrace. Reflexively, he tightens his hold on him and Eggsy gives a warm little laugh in answer.

“I’ve got to piss,” he says in a low voice, and laughs louder when Harry hastily lets him go.

He falls back asleep in the short few minutes it takes Eggsy to go to the loo and back, and wakes again when Eggsy burrows back under the sheets. He plasters tile-cold feet to Harry’s calves and buries damp hands in his hair to kiss him, slow and unhurried. His lips are cool and wet - Harry pictures him bent over the sink, naked, washing the taste of cock and nap from his mouth, not taking the time to dry it properly in his haste to return to bed.

“M’hungry,” he says against Harry’s mouth. Harry hums absently into the kiss, fits his palm over the one of Eggsy’s buttocks, pushes him closer. “Ain’t going nowhere, Harry,” Eggsy murmurs. “I’ll put the kettle on for a brew and get us some biscuits, yeah?”

Harry wants anything but a cuppa - he wants a full bottle of sweet port and the smooth, downy skin of Eggsy’s arse under his lips, the length of his pretty cock on his tongue and the taste of him down his throat. He wants Eggsy spread on a bed, sweaty and spent, and spread on a canvas, in buttery oils and glazes as barely-there as a caress; either way absolutely perfect.

“Ain’t going nowhere,” Eggsy repeats, softer, gentler. He pushes his lips to Harry’s temple, over the salt and pepper of his hair, then pushes himself away. He stumbles a little on his way out the bed, then strides away with a little glance over his shoulder. The light turns on in the hallway, throwing a splash of gold inside the bedroom. Harry hears Eggsy’s bare feet padding down the stairs then down the hall, the sound of the tap being turned on and water pouring out, then the kettle being filled, cupboards closing and opening.

It lulls him back to sleep, the sounds of life in his - their? - crooked little home. When he wakes it is to Eggsy setting two cups down on the bedside table, pushing a book out of the way and letting it fall to the floor carelessly. He has a packet of ginger biscuits tucked under his arm. Harry watches him cross the room, gorgeous in his nudity and his comfort of it, his soft cock nestled under a soft thatch of curly hair. For a second he stands in the doorway, leaning into the hall to switch off the light; and he’s golden, the hair on his head and legs made into wheat by the light. When it goes out Eggsy goes dark like a candle being blown out, and he returns to Harry pale and spectral in the low light, his skin like a trail of smoke as he hurries back inside Harry’s arms.

“Miss me?” he asks cheekily, elbowing the biscuits out of the way to loom over Harry and press his insolent grin to Harry’s lips.

“Terribly,” Harry answers gravely, and he folds a hand over Eggsy’s throat just in time to feel it vibrate as he laughs.

“ _No_ ,” Eggsy mutters when Harry replaces his hand with his mouth. “I made your ridiculous old lady tea. Wait a bit, yeah?”

When Eggsy moves away to collect cups and biscuits it feels like a giant gust of cold wind blowing all over Harry, for an instant, before Eggsy forces a cup in his hand and it feels too hot against his palm. Harry feels feverish, mind swimming. He drinks his tea, accepts a biscuit, watches Eggsy suck on a spot of honey at his thumb and sip his tea quietly. When he pulls the cup away from his lips they are reddened by the heat, his mouth made into something plump and red as ridiculously enticing as the pout of a pre-raphaelite subject; the sort of mouth that begs for kisses.

“ _Harry_ ,” Eggsy breathes when Harry does kiss him, licks into his hot mouth to taste tea and milk and honey and ginger, presses cup-warm fingers to his jaw, probably smears breadcrumbs over his skin. He reaches over Eggsy to put his cup on the bedside table and pries Eggsy’s off his hands to do the same. He feels nineteen again, snogging a ginger who’d laughed at the green carnation at his lapel with giddiness and then sheepishness when the flower ended up crushed between their chests as they snogged in a dim-lit cottage in Soho; twenty-one, rutting against a lad with teeth like polished ivory next to his dark skin, nestled behind pink lips like daggers in their sheaths and ready to sink into Harry’s shoulder; twenty-three and feeling the wetness of a bathroom floor seeping into the fabric of his trousers as he kneels face-to-face with a man’s cock, nameless even back then, known only as a hot, thick length in his mouth and an equally hot and equally thick Italian accent in his ears.

Fifty-six with a lovely young man thirty-two years his junior in his guest bed, with crumbs and sweat and warm freckled limbs between the sheets.

Looming over Eggsy, he lets shaky hands roam over Eggsy’s ribs. He notices with a flicker of annoyance that his cock is soft and uninterested, lazily nested between his legs and seemingly content to remain this way even when Eggsy wriggles against him to clumsily trap one of Harry’s thighs between his legs and rock his hard cock against it. Eggsy is bound to notice, close like this, feel Harry’s flaccid penis against his hip or his belly; and Harry waits for him to stop and laugh. 

But Eggsy just keeps rubbing himself against Harry’s thigh, his cockhead growing wet and sticky with precome. His eyes are dark, half-hidden behind heavy lids that turn his gaze into something intimate and almost animal. He’s staring at Harry with pink, spit-wet lips shining like someone has painted a translucent layer of glazing over them, where his tongue keeps peeking out of his mouth to wet them over and over again. He looks under the influence, like he wouldn’t be able to walk a straight line if asked. In the low light it’s hard to see, but he thinks he sees a dark blush staining Eggsy’s cheeks, hiding his freckles. When he leans down to kiss his cheek the skin is warm, flushed.

“Harry,” Eggsy says, the smallest whisper, the quietest prayer, more breath than name like he pulled it up from the inside of his chest. He turns to catch Harry’s lips with his, grinds his cock against his thigh. “If I come can I finish my tea,” he murmurs with a ghost of a smile on his lips, Mona Lisa-like, quietly amused and generous.

“Yes,” Harry tells him distractedly, kissing down his jaw, his throat, licking over the beauty mark there like a bullseye. When he runs his lips over the long expanse of Eggsy’s neck he almost marvels at finding the skin soft and warm in place of hard marble or cold ivory. He noses his jugular notch, kisses his collarbone, runs his fingertips over Eggsy’s earlobe then his lips; shivers when he kisses them.

“Do you want to draw me right now?” Eggsy asks, sounding a little strange, so Harry leans back to look at him: pale as paper in the blue hour, crowned in a nest of hair that could have been weaved from wheat torn out of a summered field at dusk, nipples and cockhead and lips as highlighted by whoever sculpted Eggsy’s body in their darkness, peaked and wet.

“No,” Harry says. He breathes, buries his face and a kiss in the crook of Eggsy’s neck; then: “Yes.” He pictures it: leaning over Eggsy with a sketchbook and a pencil in hand in place of his erection, pushing graphite-stained fingers over the creamy skin of Eggsy’s chest, neck, forehead.

Eggsy grins, looking incredibly pleased, and he sneaks a hand down to palm at his cock, eyes fluttering shut at the first touch. Harry holds his breath to watch him, to listen to every breath and every moan that falls off his lips, every slick little sound his fist makes around his sticky dick. His own prick has apparently gotten the message that something marvelous is happening, and it’s fattening slowly between his legs. When Eggsy’s eyes open they go straight to it and his grin becomes a filthy sort of smug smirk before softening with sudden fondness.

“Bloody _love_ watching you get hard for me,” he says, pumping his cock with his eyes trained on Harry’s.

Hesitantly, Harry leans back, sitting on his knees - they scream at him in agony and he feels really old, for a very brief instant, before he looks back at Eggsy, wanking himself off in earnest as he watches Harry, like he’s the fittest bloke he’s ever seen, like he’s the finer piece of pornography - and grabs his cock. It’s more soft than hard, still, but it stiffens quite happily with every stroke. Eggsy groans, fist going tight around his glans briefly before he starts wanking again, eyes going from Harry’s face to his cock back and forth, trailing over his torso like a caress then up to his face as a fierce kiss and down to his cock like a messy fuck, spit at the corner of his lips where he’s been drooling like he’s starving for Harry, precome shiny on the crown of his penis like it’s starving, too.

Eggsy raises a shaky hand and trails feather-like fingers up Harry’s length like he’s testing waters, feeling for warmth and hardness.

“You really want me,” he tells Harry, matter-of-factly, like there isn’t a sketchbook downstairs like some registry, some collection of evidence all labelled from A to Z in Harry’s own alphabet of _Galatea_ , _Dorian_ , _Eggsy, Eggsy, Eggsy._ “ _Me_ ,” he repeats, fierce and sure, and he comes with his hand unmoving on Harry’s cock and his fist a blur over his own, blinking like he doesn’t want to close his eyes, like the shutter of a camera going off again and again in burst mode to capture a fleeting thing.

“Of course I do,” Harry breathes. “Eggsy, you are perfect. Art,” he tells him, his hand stuttering over his cock when Eggsy starts stroking him instead, slow and lazy. “The finest work of art.” Eggsy closes his eyes, slowing down. Harry can barely see him anymore, just the barest contours of his body, so he leans down to feel him with his lips instead, fitting his mouth to the places where in his mind’s eye he sees the three little moles under Eggsy’s ear, the one at his jaw, his throat, the freckle on his bottom lip. He kisses them all with reverence, setting his mouth against Eggsy’s slack one until he comes, quiet as in a museum, barely daring to breathe.

Afterwards he lets Eggsy sit up and lays his head in his lap, noses the downy skin of his thighs, ignores the stickiness of his spent cock against the nape of his neck.

“Have a biscuit,” Eggsy tells him, and he pushes a gingernut to Harry’s mouth until he accepts it, brushes fingers covered in crumbs against the flesh of his lips until Harry darts his tongue out to lick them off. “Tea’s gone cold,” he adds, carding his fingers through Harry’s hair, salt and pepper and ginger.

Harry hears him drink anyway, faraway. He’s falling asleep again.

When he wakes the bed is empty, Eggsy’s bedside still warm. It’s dark outside, streetlights painting the room yellow. Harry has no idea what time it is. He gets out of bed laboriously, every muscle and joint screaming at him. When he goes to his bedroom for clothes the room is comfortingly familiar until he steps in the ensuite in his pyjamas as he does every night and finds the cabinet half-shut, the box of condoms open, obvious traces of Eggsy’s presence this very day. Harry brushes his teeth, washes his face, and puts away the day’s clothes.

Rolling the necktie and belt and placing them in their respective drawers draws Harry’s attention to the little ceramic dish atop the dresser where he would put his signet ring in every night, after his nightly ablutions. His thumb goes to the little finger of his right hand, strokes the wrinkly skin where finger meets palm. It had been a present from his grandparents, when he’d turned eighteen, the same ring his father owned and wore every day and was buried with, the same ring his brother still wears, the same George gave his son on his eighteenth birthday. Harry wore it mindlessly, with pride the first couple of years and then out of habit, mostly, the same sort of way he wears his glasses.

He wonders when Eggsy took it - recalls looking for it after Eggsy’s first visit at the studio, that fateful Sunday, the thirteenth of November, two months ago.

How long has Eggsy been wearing it around his neck?

Where has he gone, right now?

Harry pads downstairs in his pyjamas and slippers. He rarely ever ventures downstairs in his sleep clothes, hardly ever wakes in the middle of the night anymore; it feels queer, walking around the silent, dark house without his robe, without turning on any lights. He keeps a hand along the wall, the furniture, feels for familiar frames on the wall like Ariane’s thread. He could switch on the light, call for Eggsy; he doesn’t.

He finds Eggsy in the kitchen, sitting on the counter with his knees pulled up to his chin in his pants and Harry’s red velvet robe, next to the wide open window as he smokes a cigarette. The blueish light of his cellphone throws hazy shadows over his face, back-lits the smoke into a great, winding fog. He’s the _Wanderer above the sea of fog_ as though curled up into a not-quite Flandrin pose, romanesque and young. At his feet in place of roses and laurel and votives is the now-empty packet of gingernuts, as torn as Eggsy’s pack of Lambert and Butler, both surrounded by crumbs and bits of tobacco like the aftermath of a scramble for the spoils. It’s freezing in the kitchen, the January air making Harry’s fingers tremble, his teeth chatter briefly.

“Everything alright?” he asks Eggsy, walking up to him as one approaches a wild animal, setting a hand on Eggsy’s ankle. The bone there is hard, the skin chilled into cold silk or smooth stone.

“Sure,” Eggsy tells him brightly, running the tap to put out his cigarette. “Freaking out yet?” he asks, swinging his legs over the side of the counter, feet swinging. He spreads his legs for Harry to stand between, makes fists into the fabric of his pyjamas as soon as he comes close enough.

“No,” Harry answers. He cups a hand over the side of Eggsy’s neck, runs his thumb over the ellipsis of moles under his ear then down the length of his neck to the place where the golden chain usually rests, weighted down by the ring sitting warm and secret against Eggsy’s torso, hidden under his clothes. “Not yet.”

Eggsy huffs out a little laugh at that, lets his lips quirk up into a smile that’s equal parts amused and relieved. His head lolls to the side, trapping Harry’s fingers; he turns and pushes a kiss to the inside of his wrist. His lips are cold and dry.

“Good,” he says, small but no less sincere, closing his eyes. Harry pets the side of his head, the close-cropped hair behind his ear.

“Come back to bed,” Harry tells him. “It’s dreadfully late, and we have work to do in the morning.”

Eggsy hops off the counter, lets Harry lead him away with a hand at the small of his back. The robe keeps slipping off his shoulder, as Ganymede’s as painted by Granger or Gagneraux, and Harry in his dark pyjamas should not feel as much as an eagle as he does.

Once in the hallway there’s the same moment of hesitation there was earlier that day, standing between their two bedrooms. Harry turns to Eggsy, finds nothing but challenge in his eyes, and leads him to his own bedroom and then to his own bed, where soon enough in place of nothing these is now Eggsy by his side, watching him silently. He’s not been wearing anything under the robe and so he curls up next to Harry in his pants; rubs his knees against the soft cotton of Harry’s trousers before slipping bare toes under the hem of the leg to rest on Harry’s shinbone. His eyelids keep fluttering, like he’s not sure if he wants to look at Harry or let the weight of exhaustion pull them down.

“I have to work on the painting, tomorrow,” Harry says in a low whisper.

“You hate it,” Eggsy mumbles. “Should do something else.” His accent and his sleepiness are making mince out of his words, his lips barely moving.

“I do not _hate_ it,” Harry protests. Eggsy hums.

“We should go see Roxy’s shit in Soho,” he adds. “Inspo and all.”

“Alright.”

After a second of hesitation, Harry reaches towards him to stroke his cheek, his temple, his hair. Eggsy doesn’t move. Against Harry’s shin his toes are cold, like sea-smoothed pebbles on a wintry shingle beach, like stone; where they touch his skin it seems instead of warming up they spread their chill.

Harry falls asleep before he can feel Eggsy’s skin turn soft and warm.


	16. Chapter 16

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Late again, sir. So sorry!
> 
> Cider, and a _[Detail Of An Old Man](https://67.media.tumblr.com/b2789f545325015fbc0f0a4aa7ed756c/tumblr_obkfpw8OwK1vvdm7qo1_540.jpg)_ from _[The Raft Of The Medusa](https://67.media.tumblr.com/c3e83f52e1080cb3ce5a8a5ce771e487/tumblr_obkfpw8OwK1vvdm7qo2_1280.jpg)_ by Gericault (1819).
> 
> As well: [a polyptych of Eastbourne](http://sircolinfilth.tumblr.com/post/148614975272/l-r-shingle-beach-off-marine-parade-camera) in its relevance to this chapter; and [The Pennings](http://www.zoopla.co.uk/property-history/the-pennings/upper-dukes-drive/eastbourne/bn20-7xu/19566654).

When they leave the house the next day, some part of Harry is surprised to see the world has not ended. Everything is the same, the taxi crawling through rain-soaked roads up to Bethnal Green, the late morning light spilling inside the studio. The sketchbook from yesterday is sitting forgotten on his painting stool, filled with the very reasons for its abandonment, the soft curves and hard planes of Eggsy’s body, his piercing eyes, his demanding mouth.

Eggsy himself is staring critically at the canvas still perched on the easel, frowning at Dorian. His camera is in his hand, a fixed focal lens screwed into place. Harry watches him take a few steps back, adjusting settings with slow, still hesitant fingers, before he raises the camera and shoots. His fingertips are fleeting things around the focus ring, holding it in place as one would a precious thing, a fragile butterfly or an old love letter.

“It’s not finished,” Harry remarks. He takes off his jacket and gathers his painting clothes in his arms, stalks off to the bathroom and leaves the door open. “Have you gotten any film developed?”

“Nah, not yet,” Eggsy answers. Harry takes his shirt off, slips on the old, weathered Henley that still smells like turpentine no matter how many time he washes it. When he pulls his head out the fabric, Eggsy is there, camera in his hands, leaning against the doorframe. “Do you know what you’re gonna do?”

“Finish the painting,” Harry says, matter-of-factly. His hands hesitate at his fly for a second before he unfastens it, pushing his trousers down his legs. They shake. He sits down on the lip of the tub, kicks them off, grabs the old paint-stained trousers. He glances up at Eggsy, finds him with his camera raised, fingers cajoling the ring into focus. “Don’t you have anything more interesting to photograph?”

Eggsy laughs, lowers the camera a second to crook an eyebrow at him.

“Says the bloke who spends all his time drawing me.”

“You are extremely interesting,” Harry tells him. He runs his fingers through his hair, curses the neon lighting of the bathroom, every strand of gray, every wrinkle. The shutter of Eggsy’s camera sounds behind him, too loud in the small room. Harry curses under his breath.

“There,” Eggsy says, lowering his camera, taking two steps to press a kiss to the side of his neck. Harry watches him in the mirror, his skin smoother and paler than ever when he stands next to Harry. “You’ll live forever.”

Harry wants to tell him that he’ll be _old_ forever, in Eggsy’s eyes, in that stretch of knowable _forever_ that goes to the last seconds of his life. _Technically, you can hold your breath for the rest of your life_ , Harry recalls his brother telling him, when they were boys, somewhere on a quiet beach as they floated in blue-green waters. It had taken him a few minutes to understand, and when he had George had laughed at his shocked face before play-wrestling him underwater.

“We should go to the seaside,” he says instead, as they walk to the main floor of the studio.

Eggsy stares for a second, packing his camera back up and sitting in his stool, atop the raised level, crowned in the checkerboard of light filtering through the windows.

“What about the painting?” he asks, gesturing at the easel. “Ain’t it due in like, four months?”

Harry looks at Dorian, at Eggsy behind him. It doesn’t suit Eggsy, to be another work of art than his own.

“Maybe I need some fresh air,” Harry says, recalling Merlin’s words to him, one evening in November.

“A’ight,” Eggsy tells him with a disbelieving laugh. “Take us to the sea, you fucking freak.”

This is how Harry finds himself sitting on a Southern train zipping through the countryside one late Friday morning, staring at the hills and the overwhelming greenness of the landscape outside. Eggsy is looking out the window, lips parted. When they’d gone past Clapham Junction he’d blinked and said, _I reckon that’s as far as I ever went._ The carriage is empty save for three quietly conversing grandmothers, one of which gave Eggsy furtive, appreciative glances when they’d climbed in at East Croydon. Harry doesn’t blame her.

“Who even fucking _goes_ there?” Eggsy mumbles when an older couple joins their carriage in Lewes.

“Old people,” Harry says plainly. Eggsy snorts and hides his smile behind his hand, but his eyes are all crinkled up in amusement. “Or those who had the misfortune of inheritinga house there.”

“Guessing we’re staying at the hotel, then?” Eggsy says sweetly.

Harry kicks the side of his shoe, as childishly as chidingly. Quick as lightning, Eggsy traps his foot between his, and remains like this all the way to Eastbourne.

It has been years since Harry last came, but little has changed, and he doubts much will ever change. The streets are still lined with an absurd amount of charity shops, and when their taxi drives down Cavendish Place the pier still stands at the end, completely deserted in the cold weather but for a handful of people bundled up in jumpers and raincoats. Along the Grand Parade Harry spots the bandstand, all shut down for the winter; then briefly in the distance, before they pass the dark stump of the Wish Tower, he sees the cliffs, the fog surrounding them in a way that could be called either romanesque or ominous.

“Fucking hell,” Eggsy breathes when they make their way up the cliffs and into the woods. The taxi slows as the roads gets dark and winding up to the house. “Are we going all the way up?”

“No,” Harry tells him with a small, content smile. “Although we will go, if you would like that.”

Eggsy nods, dumbstruck, when the taxi crawls to a stop on the small path leading to the house. Not that any of it can be seen from the road - or anywhere, really. The hollow boulder still stands next to the green gates, where George would climb when they were children as their father unlocked the gate and their mother fussed over Harry, sleepy and carsick from the two hours drive. He remembers George had almost twisted his ankle, once, sticking his foot into the hole in the rock. It feels like it was ages ago - and it was. Half a century.

The gate groans when Harry pushes it, Eggsy on his feet. It’s a short walk up to the house, the gravel crunching under their feet, the overgrown trees swallowing up the few sounds of traffic.

“The house is called the Pennings,” Harry explains when they reach the red courtyard, the grand house emerging slowly from behind the trees. The lock sticks a bit, and inside it is a little musty, everything dark with the power turned off and all the windows shuttered; but it is still exactly as Harry remembers it. “My parents purchased it when I was a small child, and they came here every summer for nearly fifty years. When they passed, my brother George and I inherited it.”

“Didn’t even know you had a brother,” Eggsy mutters, craning his neck to look at the imposing oak staircase as Harry goes to turn the power back on. “He got any kids?”

“Grandchildren, actually,” Harry says casually, climbing up a few steps to open the shutters of the front windows. “His only son, Christopher, has two little girls…” He trails off at the end, looking out the window at the red stone, the treeline behind it hiding the world outside. Christopher is over ten years Eggsy’s senior. Harry swallows. “Come on up.”

Up the stairs is an almost overwhelming array of doors, all shut. Harry leads Eggsy to one in the corner, behind the staircase. When he opens the windows the dust goes flying madly, particles dancing in the midday sunlight. A fine layer of it covers every piece of furniture, even the sheet laid down on the empty bed.

“The bathroom is through here,” Harry explains. His hand goes to the handle, then he hesitates. “Would you rather sleep in your own room?” he asks. “There’s a guest bedroom at the end of the hall.”

“Why would I do that?” Eggsy asks, brows furrowed, nose crinkled up in distaste. “‘Less you don’t want me in your fancy bed.”

“Nothing fancy about it, really,” Harry huffs, hand falling to his side. Eggsy takes a step towards him, gives him a crooked little grin.

“It’s got you in it, Harry,” he says, “that’s plenty fancy.”

Later he calls for a taxi to go down the cliffs, takes Eggsy to the chippie on the pier and watches him wolf down cod and chips and mushy peas on a greasy, dingy table inside the shop. When Eggsy kisses him, somewhere on the pier near the camera obscura, he tastes like vinegar and salt and his lips are slick with grease. It’s perfect.

There’s something about the sea air - it makes his hands feel cold and sticky but full of shaky energy, which he uses to push Eggsy inside the smelly alcoves near the bandstand and kiss him, too, his mouth cold, his body trembling. When he nuzzles Eggsy’s neck under the woolen scarf Harry had wound around his neck that morning he smells his own cologne, at first, before smelling Eggsy’s and seeing a tiny glimpse of the golden chain resting under all his layers of clothing. It makes his head spin a little.

It has been drizzling continuously all day long and the lenses of his glasses are covered in tiny droplets that make everything seem fuzzy, no matter how many times Harry takes them off to wipe them on his handkerchief. He uses it to wipe the lens of Eggsy’s camera, too, with all the care it deserves; then cups his hands loosely around it to allow Eggsy to take a picture of the shingle beach and the mad waves licking up its shore. He even holds it for him when Eggsy whips out his phone instead and takes a selfie, the grey sky at his back and his cheeks red with the wind and wet with rain; but his smile wide and happy.

“Come here,” he says, and he reaches out to pull Harry close to him.

Harry can’t bring himself to look anywhere but at the screen, can’t focus on the tiny pin-sized lens when there’s Eggsy with a sort of grin that is equal parts fond and smug, like Harry is something to be proud of, to be shown off. His own smile is awkward, he knows, a little forced; so after Eggsy has snapped his first shot he turns his head and presses dry lips to his temple instead, and closes his eyes. He feels Eggsy move against him, his cold nose brushing Harry’s before their lips meet, Eggsy’s tight with the smile still stretching them. He hears the shutter sound go off.

“This is ridiculous,” Harry tells him gravely when they part. “Do not send this to anyone.”

Eggsy’s laugh gets all swallowed up by the wind and the waves and the kiss Harry can’t help but press to his lips again.

When they get back to the Pennings Eggsy is still shivering, so Harry sends him off to shower while he makes the bed. Eggsy comes out of the bathroom pink-skinned from the heat of the water and entirely, unashamedly naked. 

“Do you wanna shower, or,” he asks, trailing off at the end and tilting his head to the side.

“Or,” Harry answers, and he pushes Eggsy on the freshly-made bed.

The sheets are a wreck in seconds, as Eggsy squirms and laughs to get Harry’s cold hands off his warm skin, then as he struggles to undo Harry’s belt and shirt at the same time. His toes are slipping along Harry’s ankle to get his socks off and his mouth is pressing distracted kisses to the side of his jaw. It’s a marvel to see him like this.

“A hand, maybe?” he snaps at Harry after a few minutes. One of Harry’s socks is bunched up under his heel, his shirt is untucked with two buttons undone in the middle, and the tail end of his belt has been pulled out of one of the loops.

“Of course,” Harry says, and he curls a hand around Eggsy’s lovely, hard prick. Immediately Eggsy’s efforts die down, his eyelids fluttering shut.

“Oh fuck off,” Eggsy mumbles in a tone that sounds well like _oh,_ _fuck me_. “Go get a condom at least.” Harry’s grip falters. “Harry?”

“Yes,” he says. “Yes, I will certainly go do that. I am afraid it might take a bit, though.”

“Didn’t you bring any?” Eggsy asks, a little wildly. “Who the fuck goes for a weekend at the beach with his boyfriend and doesn’t bring that shit?”

“Ask yourself,” Harry mutters, pulling his clothes back together. “A half hour at most, Eggsy.”

“ _Shit fuck hell_ ”, Eggsy mumbles, covering his face with his hands. His cock lays against his belly, hard and proud.

Harry runs all the way down the stairs.

He couldn’t care less about the view down the Channel as he makes his way down to the Meads, speed-walking through the small residential streets to the Co-Operative he knows is closest to the Pennings. Inside he makes a beeline for the hygiene aisle, sidestepping old gentlemen and mothers pushing buggies. Locating condoms and lubricant takes much longer than it should, and Harry doesn’t quite know what pushes him to text Eggsy to ask if he needs anything else.

When he gets a picture of Eggsy’s still-hard cock and _Yeah yr mouth_ in answer, well, Harry can only blame it on himself.

_We have no food_ , _should I buy some?_ he asks Eggsy. 

_What is wrong with you?_ he asks himself.

_I dont think you understnd the gravity of th situatn._ , Eggsy replies. There’s another picture, a full-body one, a little blurry and a little obscene: Eggsy is holding his cock, his face as red as his glans, his lips parted and his eyes dark.

_Bring yourself off if you want_ , he types. _I’ll make you orgasm again._

_We need to wrk on yr sextin_ , Eggsy answers with yet another picture of his cock, his fist tight and purposeful around it. _Hurry_.

Harry hurries all the way home.

He ends up making Eggsy come two more times before nightfall, leaving him gasping and wrecked on his back. Harry has come once, spilling over Eggsy’s belly where his come is drying sticky and translucent. There is a multitude of things Harry should do: husher Eggsy off to the bathroom for another shower, put the tee-shirt he’d used to clean himself up after coming that first time before Harry had come home in the sink to soak, dispose of the condom Eggsy had spilled into the second time, ensconced in Harry’s mouth, change the sweat-soaked, semen-stained sheets he’d wiped his hand on after Eggsy’s third orgasm. But Harry watches him, spread out on the mattress and tangled in the wet sheets as though they were waves pulling him under, his fingers gripping the headboard like a drowning man besieging the _Barque of Dante_ ; watches him, and clambers off to the small room across the hall on unsteady legs.

The small room used to be his mother’s study, where she knit or read or worked on her syllabus in the summer months - the narrow shelves are still overflowing with books of classics and notes, dusty jars filled with patiently wound skeins and balls of yarn and wool. Harry doesn’t turn the lamp on, and with only the light spilling over from the hall his fingers searching the lower shelves brush over J.C. Rennie and J.D. Salinger, Sirdar and Sartre, Twilleys and Twain. Near the end of the shelf his hurried fingers stop for a second on _To The Lighthouse_ somewhere between Wilde and Yeats.

Harry remembers, vaguely, Lily and her painting, her long struggle in front of her canvas and her models.

“Harry?” Eggsy calls from the bedroom, quiet, breathless.

He grabs the small sketchbook he had tucked there the last time he visited, an old leather pencil case from the desk, and stalks back to the bedroom.

As soon as he comes in Eggsy laughs and covers his face, his shoulders shaking with it.

“Oh fucking shit I can’t believe you,” he says, dropping his hands off his face. His eyes and his cockhead are both pink and exhausted, but he smiles nonetheless. “Go ahead. Do your thing. Bloody hell.”

Eggsy moves his legs out of the way and remains boneless on the matress, so Harry sits cross-legged at the foot of the bed and leaves through the sketchbook until he finds an empty page, rifles through the case for a sharpened pencil, and draws a first, long line for Eggsy’s supine form.

If he thinks of Eggsy as _Watson and the Shark_ he will have to think of himself as the shark, the Lord Henry Wotton to Eggsy’s Dorian, but Harry would rather be Basil Hallward. Nonetheless he can’t help but notice Eggsy’s beauty, as always, even wearing depravity under the shape of a sheen of sweat as he is right now. His cheeks are reddenned, the blush spreading down to his torso, making early blossoms of his nipples amidst a field of slowly pinking flowers that are blooming on his pale skin in a rose stain, marred there and there by the evidence of Harry’s mouth, where it sucked and bit.

But there are no colours in the low light, in Harry’s fittingly small sketchbook, intimate and easy to hide. And Eggsy is not hiding anything right now - his legs akimbo reveal the dusting of hair on the inside of his thighs, darker than the pale down on their front, and every small blemish easily penciled on the paper; the tired skin of his bollocks, the touching nature of his flaccid cock, soft and spent as it is.

“You drawing me, yeah?” Eggsy asks. “This better not be for your bloody painting,” he mutters, his eyelids heavy now.

“Of course not,” Harry murmurs back, sketching the curve of Eggsy’s relaxed foot, every bite-sized toe. He hesitates for a second, lead hovering over the paper, then sketches in his own foot, inches away from Eggsy’s own, then the knobs of his knee laid over it, a makeshift table for the very corner of the sketchbook. Harry stares at the page for a second, his body barely-there in the corner next to the expanse of Eggsy’s own.

As he focuses of Eggsy’s arms, he remembers Lily Briscoe, paralysed by the fear of her paintings being tossed away and out of sight, _forgotten_ ; and her final realisation that executing her vision in her work matters more than its fate.

Harry draws Eggsy’s slack fingers, thinks of them on shutter buttons capturing images, never forgetting; of Eggsy pointing the lens at his own face and making himself live forever.


	17. Chapter 17

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apologies, over and over again. Life should be quieter now, promise.
> 
> Trains and coaches and the _[Wanderer above the Sea of Fog](https://65.media.tumblr.com/d22bab4ac8a10befdd5b0f41329a44d5/tumblr_obxcezaHmW1vvdm7qo1_1280.jpg)_ by Caspar David Friedrich, 1818.
> 
> Another polyptych: [Harry Hart (1960-), portraitist](http://sircolinfilth.tumblr.com/post/148955286077/as-soon-as-they-exit-the-car-the-wind-is-quick-to). On [my Tumblr](http://sircolinfilth.tumblr.com), where if you are lucky, you can read some _fucking brill_ binman AU. Or just TBP-related rambles. Though you'd find them more often on [Twitter](https://twitter.com/callmealois).

They do end up going up the cliffs the next day, after eating cold Papa John’s leftovers for breakfast. The taxi driver eyes them suspiciously on the drive up, leaving Harry to explain in hushed tones that Beachy Head is one of the prime suicide spots in England.

“Especially right now,” the driver interjects loudly. “Not many tourists up there this time of year.”

“There are _tourists_ at some times?” Eggsy asks.

“The town is gaining popularity again, actually,” Harry tells him.

“Oh, don’t even try,” the drivers laughs. “I’ve a son his age too, anything less crowded than a footie game is dead, for them.”

Harry feels the back of his neck grow red and hot. Eggsy’s fingers shoot up to rest on his thigh, stroking the skin there through Harry’s corduroys.

“He’s my boyfriend, guv,” Eggsy says. The driver stammers a little.

“Apologies,” he mumbles, and he remains silent all the way to the deserted lot nearer to the cliff edge.

As soon as they exit the car the wind is quick to slap them in the face. Quite literally - Eggsy sways unsteadily on his feet after a few steps on the bright green grass. It’s not raining, at least not yet; but up there the fog is thicker than ever, and it feels as though Eggsy could disappear any second. Harry reaches out and grabs his elbow to steady him, then loops his arm under Eggsy’s.

“Fucking hell,” Eggsy murmurs as they make their way up one of the paths previous visitors have carved through the thick vegetation. “This the end of the world?”

“Yes,” Harry answers simply. They can barely hear each other over the howling wind. It seems to take forever to reach the cliff edge, everything made milky and infinite by the fog. “Are you familiar with Poe? _Annabel Lee_?” When Eggsy stays silent, Harry clears his throat: “ _It was many and many a year ago, in a kingdom by the sea, that a maiden there lived whom you may know by the name of Annabel Lee; and this maiden she lived with no other thought than to love and be loved by me-_ ”

“ _I was a child_ , _and_ \- well you ain’t really a child, you,” Eggsy says. “Yeah, I know it.”

“Full of surprises,” Harry tells him.

“Want another surprise?” Eggsy asks. Harry nods minutely, follows suit when Eggsy stops walking. The wind is making a mess of Eggsy’s short hair and swallowing his words, so Harry lets him step closer and sets his hands on Eggsy’s hips almost reflexively. “I ain’t a child, Harry,” he says quietly.

“I know that,” Harry answers. “Eggsy, I really do.”

Eggsy gives him a skeptical little look and shuffles impossibly closer, winds his arms around Harry’s neck and brushes the tip of his nose against Harry’s.

“And I ain’t art either,” he mumbles against Harry’s mouth. 

The wind could have carried his words away but it doesn’t, not like this, not when Eggsy’s arms have built an enclave around Harry’s ears; like he wasn’t about to let anything get in the way of Harry hearing what he had to say. Harry presses cold lips to Eggsy’s, kisses him until his skin feels soft and warm again.

“That I cannot believe,” Harry tells him. “Your eyes are like the sea, Eggsy. Your skin is like ivory…” Eggsy sighs in his arms, and makes a noncommittal noise in the back of his throat. “Would you rather I tell you all your flaws?”

“Nah,” Eggsy says. “Yeah. I don’t know.” He swallows, blinks. “It just don’t feel real, you know?”

“ _Oh_ , my darling.” Harry wraps his arms tightly around Eggsy’s back. He wonders what they look like, two men embracing atop a foggy cliff with the wind messing their hair and their scarves. There is no one around. This is the most stupidly romanesque situation Harry has ever been in. “My darling-”

“ _My life and my bride_?” Eggsy completes, looking as mischievous as a creature out of a Greek myth, as impish as a nymph or a fairy in an old bedtime story. Harry looks at the insolent, smart curve of his smile, the deep green-blue-sea-something of his eyes.

“Well, you have the ring already, haven’t you,” he says, because it bears saying, because he _had_ to say it, at some point. As soon as the words are out of Harry’s mouth Eggsy moves away like he’s been burnt, his face going crimson and warm where the wind had made it pink and cold. Harry reels him back in by tightening the hold of his arms. “I don’t mind,” Harry assures him when Eggsy tips his chin up at him, ready to fight.

“Don’t think I’m a creepy thief?” Eggsy asks, chin still tilted up, still trying to make himself as tall and as big as he can.

“Oh, absolutely,” Harry tells him casually. He moves away, loops his arm with Eggsy’s again and starts walking again. “But I don’t mind.”

Next to him Eggsy is blushing still, one of his hands up at his collar probably palming the chain through the fabric of his clothes. They walk quietly for some time along the cliff edge. The tide is coming on high, the waves crashing loudly against the rocks down below, a counterpoint to the howling wind. Other than that everything is quiet. Eggsy leads them towards the edge, into some hollow piece of land created by a landslide. Harry is not too good with heights - it makes him a little uneasy seeing Eggsy stand so close to the edge, the wind whipping his scarf around as if it could push Eggsy off into the sea as easily.

“Don’t stand too close,” he says. Eggsy rolls his eyes, but walks back towards Harry.

“ _Young girl, you’re out of your mind_?” Eggsy croons, fiddling with his camera bag to extract the Nikon and a wide-angle lens.

“Yes,” Harry says as Eggsy screws the lens into place and works the settings, “that, too.”

Eggsy laughs at him and raises the camera to capture Harry, wind-swept and freezing, standing alone amidst the fog; then turns around to face the sea and the side of the cliffs, going and going all the way to Birling Gap but shrouded in mist so thick they cannot even see the Seven Sisters or Belle Tout. Harry takes a few steps back and watches Eggsy, his camera raised like a periscope, _Wanderer above the Sea of Fog_ , impervious above most things, gorgeous above all else. Harry collects him mist-drenched, pressing cold, wet lips against Harry’s where he stands between wildflowers and crooked trees. _Who gets this?_ Harry wonders when he blinks and sees Eggsy’s relaxed face, the grey sky behind him, the too-green grass, yellow wildflowers lost in the greenery like gold in a riverbed.

He draws Eggsy later, back at the Pennings, catching the winter sun in the conservatory. He’s laying on a wicker armchair, shirt pushed up carelessly to reveal his belly, his hipbones; reading _Wuthering Heights_ with a cup of tea on the floor next to him. When he wants a sip he lets his arm fall and searches the air for the porcelain with the tip of his fingers, then grabs the cup by its rim to hoist it up. When he takes a drink his lips pink up from the heat, and when he sets the cup back down on the tiled floors it rings a little too loud in the quiet conservatory - quiet but for the scratching of Harry’s pencil on the soft paper of his sketchbook.

Whenever Eggsy moves he stops drawing, the complete opposite of what usually happens - Eggsy going still whenever the quiet _scritch-scratch_ of graphite on paper can be heard - and just watches him, the curve of his bare feet, his knees stretching the fabric of his jeans, his delicate-looking hipbones, the hair on his navel, the way his shoulders move under his long-sleeved shirt and the way the fabric wrinkles at his elbows, not quite pushed up but revealing enough of Eggsy’s forearms and wrists. He drinks in Eggsy’s collarbones, his throat and the mole dotting it, his lips all tea-warm, his eyes moving over Brontë’s words, a blemish on his forehead, his hair all golden in the early afternoon light; Harry drinks him in like he just spent decades in the desert and Eggsy could very well be a mirage.

_For as often as you drink this cup_ , he remembers from his grandmother’s Bible; then from a past boyfriend’s extensive collection of graphic novels and comic books, _it will never be enough_.

After some time he notices Eggsy’s mug is empty, and he sets his sketchbook down to cross the room and collect it, as well as a kiss, warm with tea and sweet with honey. Harry swipes a broad hand up Eggsy’s arm, fleeting fingers over his neck, his jaw. He strokes the sharp-looking lines with his fingertips before trailing them back down Eggsy’s neck. His skin is radiating heat from the sunlight he’s been soaking in for the past hour, and Harry gets a little lost in trying to find the golden chain around his neck. When he does, he hooks two fingers under it and drags it up and out of Eggsy’s shirt to grab the ring and let it rest in the palm of his hand.

It _is_ his ring, of course - the signet bears the Hart family crest, and on the inside Harry finds engraved his birth date and the proverb his father picked for him. His own ring read _Knowledge Is Power_ , and George still wears the words _Live & Let Live _every day. Harry’s reads-

“ _Manners Maketh Man,_ ” Eggsy says.

“Do you know what that means?” Harry asks, turning the ring over in his palm to look at the inscription. When Eggsy shrugs, he explains: “It means that what makes a man worthy of respect is his manners - how he behaves himself, not his status, his titles, his age… None of that matters if he has manners. They are what separates us from animals.”

“So it don’t matter that I’m a chav,” Eggsy asks, running a fingertip down the side of Harry’s thumb. Harry shakes his head. “Or that I’m young.” Harry shakes his head again. “Or that you’re old.”

Harry laughs in spite of himself and catches Eggsy’s finger in his fist, pulls his hand up to his mouth to kiss his knuckles.

“ _Eggsy_ ,” he says against the skin of his hand.

“Say it don’t matter,” Eggsy tells him, quietly. He looks and sounds desperately _young_ , like this, curled up on a wicker chair with his eyes all big and earnest, younger than his twenty-four years. It makes Harry feel older than ever, and he closes his eyes and presses his lips against Eggsy’s hand. “Harry. _Harry_. I can’t keep waiting for you to freak out, yeah?” He looks like he wants to move away, to tilt his chin up at Harry, probably, but Harry is still holding onto the ring and the chain. “I feel like I’m gonna wake up someday and you’ll be gone.”

“I am not going anywhere.”

“And neither am I,” Eggsy tells him slowly. “Not now and not when the painting’s done and not when my contract stops.”

“You can’t possibly know that,” Harry answers, letting go of the ring. It falls back against Eggsy’s chest before swinging like a pendulum. He watches it for a quiet moment. “Why did you take it?”

Eggsy catches the ring deftly, hides it in his fist.

“I’m a magpie, me,” he says, almost derisively in that way of his that is so transparently self-depreciative, “I see something shiny, I take it.” Away from Harry’s grasp he’s free to tilt his head back and look down at Harry. “Thought I might pawn it off or something.”

“Why didn’t you, then?”

“The writing,” Eggsy answers immediately. “It seemed important.”

“It is,” Harry tells him gratefully. “It was a gift from my father.”

“Is he still alive?” Eggsy asks brashly, no muss, no fuss. It makes Harry smile, his lack of tact. _How gone can you possibly be?_ he asks himself.

“He passed away seven years ago,” Harry says gently. “It was pneumonia, in the end, and Alzheimer’s all along.” Even though Eggsy did not ask, he continues. “My mother followed a few months later. She was exhausted. She used to read and knit a lot, and by the end arthritis had deformed her hands so much she could not turn a page, let alone work needles.”

Eggsy just stares at him after Harry stops talking, the ring still clenched in his fist. After a while, he reaches behind his neck for the clasp and fumbles to undo it. The chain pools in his hand, and he pulls it away to free the signet ring and place it in Harry’s palm.

“Harry,” he begins, frowning, “You’re fucking _terrified_ of getting old. You watch your cholesterol like it’s going to stab you or something. You won’t do anything that’ll damage your hands.” Eggsy swallows, then. “And now you’re all, _oh my parents died six years ago, mmh, wonder why I’m so bloody scared of being old,_ ” he says in a crude imitation of Harry’s accent.

“It’s not just that they died,” Harry says quietly. He knows this. One of his father’s coworkers gave him his daughter’s number at his mother’s funeral, a therapist with whom he did ten sessions of grief counselling. It helped. It feels more difficult, somehow, getting the words out for Eggsy in his parents’ house than it was in Helen Winterton’s grey Pimlico office. “My father lost his mind. My mother exhausted herself caring for him.” Harry doesn’t tell him about his father turning to his wife to ask, in a too-loud whisper, _Who in the Devil’s name is that?_ Or nodding at Christopher with a sweet _Come here, Georgie boy_. Harry doesn’t tell him about his mother’s mangled hands, made into a mess of knots like rope left in a drawer, unable to open boxes of painkillers and leaving her to spend entire nights laying in quiet agony, watching the ceiling turn from black to grey to white in the silence left behind by her husband’s death, after weeks of coughing and ragged breaths and years of waking up in the middle of the night to ask _Where are we?_

Harry certainly doesn’t tell him about the day his father forgot how he drank his tea and his mother cried standing in the kitchen.

“Nothing says that’ll happen to you,” Eggsy tells him gently. The ring in Harry’s hand is warm from Eggsy’s skin. He clenches it in his fist, focuses on breathing. “Nothing says that’ll happen to _you and me_.” It’s still so fragile, this thing between them, not quite an _us_ yet. “Besides, told you, if you don’t ease off the bottle you’ll die in five years,” Eggsy says, his tone lighter. When Harry looks at him his eyes are serious, though, serious and _adoring_.

“You’ll get tired of me and leave before that,” Harry replies in a similar tone.

“I promise,” Eggsy says gravely.

They seal it with a kiss. There’s something about Eggsy knowing his most intimate fears that makes Harry feel incredibly vulnerable, like when boys at Eton learnt Simon Peterson (Parson? Peters?) was afraid of the dark and they locked him in a closet in the hallway. But the sun is shining, and Eggsy pushes slow, careful lips against his and doesn’t move, doesn’t walk away, doesn’t run himself ragged caring for Harry; and he is not dying, no more than usual.

It makes him realise he doesn’t know anything about Eggsy.

All he knows of his life is made of passing hints: the bruises on his skin, the chilling conversation - if one can call it that - he’d stumbled upon months ago during which he was acquainted with Eggsy’s stepfather, brief mentions of his mother and his sister, the estates he’d driven Eggsy to once. It paints a picture as well as oils do, though.

“How is your family doing?” Harry asks quietly, like he’s not sure if he’s supposed to; if he’s _allowed_ to.

Eggsy huffs out a quiet breath of laughter against Harry’s chin and moves a few inches away to answer.

“Good, I think,” he says. He frowns a little, eyes lost somewhere beyond Harry, beyond the Pennings and this strange bubble of art, sex and contentedness they’ve built. Harry thinks no one under the age of thirty should have worry lines, but Eggsy does. “My mum says the money helps, and my baby sister’s starting to toddle properly on her own.”

Nothing more. Harry waits, but apparently Eggsy’s done, and it takes him a few seconds to understand what Eggsy means. As always, as much of an open book Eggsy can be he never _tells_ , leaves hints on his body and in his words, his attitude, his tone, his life; like a trail of breadcrumbs. And if Harry follows it and walks back, passing the moment Eggsy stopped fighting about the amount Harry pays him, his easy acceptance of leaving with a complete stranger and the fact that he did not move out the second his first week of pay was deposited into his bank account; all the way from the beginning to right now, _My mum says the money helps_ …

Harry knows where Eggsy’s salary has been going, back in London, somewhere in South Hampstead. He wonders how much Eggsy’s stepfather drinks of it. He doesn’t want to ask. Something tells him Eggsy probably wouldn’t want to answer that, either.

In the quiet conservatory, amidst floating flecks of dust and rare winter sunrays, Harry opens his fist to contemplate his family’s ring, the proverb and his birthdate inside, so many years ago. He remembers thirty-eight years ago, his father taking him aside in his study amongst piles of medical books and pads of thick watercolours paper, and sitting him down to hand him his very own signet ring. He remembers seven years ago, his father thin and pale, the gold ever-gleaming at his finger like a beacon. He remembers,  _It was not till they had examined the rings that they recognised who it was_.

“There,” he says, and he takes Eggsy’s hand. The bespoke ring turns down when Harry places it on his little finger as he does for himself, and he smiles. He slides it onto Eggsy’s index finger instead, where the gold gleams proudly. On impulse, Harry leans down and presses his lips to it, then to Eggsy’s hand. “My prince,” he adds jokingly.

“Can’t believe you,” Eggsy mutters, but he looks awfully pleased. He swipes his thumb over the flat bezel, seems to feel for the coat of arms engraved there. “You sure?”

Harry looks at Eggsy, young and handsome with his lines and his blemishes and his beauty marks, his fingers and his face both making art in very different ways. _Galatea_ , his brain reminds him, _Under your hands he is your Galatea_. But he _is_ under Harry’s hands now, and he’s just a young man with a mouth made to fit Harry’s and eyes like the sea that won’t leave him or let him drown. And under Eggsy’s hands, soft and warm…

“Yes,” Harry says. “ _Eggsy_. Yes.”


	18. Chapter 18

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Cider, cider, and not a drop to drink but [_Veiled Truth_](https://67.media.tumblr.com/3bf2f328ceb8d85b0bcac0b6d6b01190/tumblr_oc8g01l5FE1vvdm7qo1_1280.jpg) by Antonio Corradini, marble, 1752. Nicknamed "Chastity". Must've been Opposites day.
> 
> [Tumblr](http://sircolinfilth.tumblr.com), [Twitter](https://twitter.com/callmealois), you know the drill. Thank you so much to all of you reading. We've been going at it for nearly four months now.

It’s a delight to watch Eggsy after - more so than usual because on his delicate hand the ring is big and attention-grabbing, beaming under cold sunlight or the crude neons of the shop when they make their way down to the Meads on the late Saturday afternoon to buy food. Harry feels a little juvenile thrill every time he catches sight of it, the furtive gleam of gold when Eggsy gestures at something or fingers his pack of Lambert & Butler for a cigarette. The sun goes down early this time of year, and it’s already sunset when they walk down the quiet road to the Meads, the streetlights making the gold yellow, red and green, reflecting more strongly on the flat bezel than they do even on the more finely chiseled places of Eggsy’s face. He wears smoke like a veil, tastes of ash when Harry kisses him in front of the Co-Operative, and moves away looking like Ophelia, dazed in the mist. Harry holds his hand like a crushing schoolboy but links their fingers together like a lover and strokes his thumb over the signet ring on Eggsy’s index finger like a lovesick fool.

“Do you want balti or korma?” Eggsy asks, crouched down in front of rows of jars of sauce. He looks up at Harry quizzically. “Harry?”

“I am awfully fond of you,” Harry says. Eggsy blinks and raises an eyebrow.

“I know,” he says slowly. “Korma?”

“Anything you want.”

Eggsy blinks a few more times before getting back up, setting a jar in the basket Harry has been faithfully carrying. He delights in seeing the skin at the back of Eggsy’s neck is all pinked up in obvious pleasure. His hand goes a little tighter around Harry’s when he leads him away to get rice. The jar of curry and the one of marmalade clink together happily when Harry pulls him back in and kisses Eggsy’s temple, the side of his nose, then his lips when Eggsy tilts his head up to press his smile to Harry’s, in the middle of the Co-Op in the Meads, in front of a glancing elderly couple and a bored teenage boy.

Harry doesn’t know if they’re watching. He doesn’t care. He’s kissed boys in worse places, and not half of them were half as pretty as Eggsy.

“This a wee bit fucking inappropriate, innit,” Eggsy whispers against his mouth. “I want biscuits. Let me buy my biscuits then home, yeah?”

“Anything,” Harry murmurs, and he goes back in for another kiss anyway, just because.

There’s something thrilling as well about watching Eggsy cook for the two of them, chopping raw chicken with a disgusted moue and his nose all wrinkled up at the smell; later the dip of his little finger in the pot of curry to taste it, then again to make Harry try it as well. The endeavour ends up with Eggsy’s pinky and ring finger in Harry’s mouth as Harry keeps him pressed against the kitchen counter to feel his half-hard cock against his thigh.

“S’called minute rice, Harry,” Eggsy tells him, low and breathless. “Not half hour rice.”

“ _Mmh_ ,” Harry answers around the mouthful of fingers he’s sucking on. Eggsy swears under his breath and shoves two more inside, like it’s going to accomplish anything. The ring is cool against Harry’s lips for a brief second when he brushes it, then Eggsy pulls his fingers out and wipes them on Harry’s cardigan.

The rice is overcooked into some sad mash by the time Eggsy gets to it, sticking to the bottom of the pot. 

“You’re washing this shit,” Eggsy says after they eat, but there’s no heat in it. Harry is already kissing the side of his neck, lightly sucking over the three little moles there. “Fucking hell, Harry.”

Eggsy pushes him away with a stern look and files off to put the kettle on, so Harry pushes his sleeves up and sets to unfucking the pot and washing their dishes. Out the corner of his eye he watches Eggsy throw teabags into cups, getting lemon, sugar, honey and milk as quickly as if he’d been doing it for years. He sits up on the counter next to the sink to drink his tea, eat his bloody Viennese whirls and have a smoke. When Harry asks for a drag he holds the cigarette out for him, fingertips pressed against Harry’s lips where they pinch the filter.

Harry finds himself cherishing these moments as much as he does the ones where he draws Eggsy or takes him to bed, those quiet, soft moments of domesticity that feel so easy; those moments that trample every question and every hesitation with something that says _Yes, sometimes things really are that simple._

Of course, taking Eggsy to bed _is_ a marvel - feeling the difference between the usual, absent-minded kisses and the ones loaded with purpose, the ones that are just the beginning of something else, it makes Harry go light-headed and a little dizzy. They’ve had sex enough times that, while the spark of unknown and novelty is still there, they know where to kiss, where to stroke, what to avoid and what to pay attention to - Eggsy knows pressing his erection against any part of Harry’s body will make his cock stiffen but that he’s not overly fond of having Eggsy bite his lip; Harry knows better than to touch the ticklish back of Eggsy’s thighs, no matter how soft his skin is there, but that carding his fingers through his hair will make him groan and shiver and grind against Harry.

But there are still things to learn, so learn they do - that evening when Harry remembers Eggsy mentioning his nipples were sensitive he lays him flat on his back on the bed and sucks one in his mouth, only to be rewarded with a pleased moan and bitten-down nails raking down the soft hair at the back of his neck. Harry is lying down awkwardly between his thighs and he can feel Eggsy’s cock fatten with every suck, every bite, every lick he gives his nipples. He thinks he can feel it grow slick at the head, too, and moves down to mouth at the glans and check for himself. 

Eggsy gives a little displeased hum in the few seconds between Harry’s mouth leaving his nipples and returning at the head of his cock, so Harry palms his way up Eggsy’s torso to pinch them after hastily giving his prick a few strokes to pull the foreskin down, letting the gland pop out all fat and lovely. It fits in his mouth so well, by all the laws of chance and biology that decided cocks were made to be sucked, or in turn that Harry’s mouth was made to fit for Eggsy’s prick, according to the hopelessly enamoured part of Harry that would like to believe that Eggsy was made for him, by some impossible, genius sculptor who shaped Eggsy’s body to fit Harry’s hands and mouth so well, to allow him to caress and worship him like an icon. 

This is the same part of Harry that scratched, one late evening in November, the name _Galatea_ under his first sketch of Eggsy, the part that cannot believe someone so perfect could exist, the part that fills in that impossible prospect, the unknowns in the equation, with _I must have conjured him somehow._ Eggsy’s very existence, the presence of the warmth of his body under his hands and the pulse of his blood inside his mouth, makes Harry want to believe in his grandparents’ God, the one he stopped worshipping when he was a boy.

Eggsy is a divine creature, Apollo and Adonis with a body on rumpled sheets that could have been carved by Bernini or Strazza: that softness lovingly coaxed out of a block of marble to show every forceful press of fingers in Proserpina’s thighs and the luscious spread of Hermaphrodite's arse on a supple-looking mattress. Harry remembers being in his twenties, in the Louvre first thing in the morning fresh off the train from Italy and thinking, _There will never be a single body as perfect as the ones in museums._

But there is Eggsy, laid out on the bed, an offering at an altar and the god it was built to in the first place all at once - what other choice has Harry but to remain on his knees?

So he trails his mouth on Eggsy’s skin as reverently as he would kiss the ivory beads on a rosary and licks the sweat and precome off his body like it’s communion. He sucks him off nice and slow, runs his hands greedily over Eggsy’s torso, brushing his nipples, his ribs, the beat of his heart. Eggsy is begging under his touch, babbling nonsense, pushing his trembling hands in his hair and his hard cock in Harry’s mouth. When Harry pulls off to kiss his fingers he is reminded of Eggsy, on the counter with his cup of tea holding a cigarette for Harry and his suds-soaked hands.

Eggsy pulls his hair, swears, messes up the sheets with his feet. Harry follows the lines of his legs with his hands, molds his palms over every crevice, every knob; curves fingers over the shape of his knees and strokes the delicate bones of his feet like he’s checking for imperfections in a sculpture. He finds plenty: blemishes, moles, birthmarks, scars; and at the same time he finds none. 

“You are perfect,” Harry tells Eggsy in a whisper breathed over the spit-slick head of his cock.

Immediately Eggsy goes still and silent, breathing harshly. Worried, Harry looks up to find him shaking his head, blinking at the ceiling.

“I ain’t,” Eggsy mutters.

Harry crawls up the length of his body, blankets it with his own and presses his lips to Eggsy’s forehead, his nose, his lips.

“You are,” Harry murmurs into his skin, against a rough spot at his chin where Eggsy must have nicked himself shaving a few days ago. Eggsy shakes his head like he’s shaking Harry’s kisses off. “You are.” Eggsy shakes his head again. Harry fits a hand against his jaw and his lips on the other side, kisses the three little moles; fists his other hand around Eggsy’s still-hard cock. “Eggsy, you are.”

“If I keep saying no will you keep saying it,” Eggsy says tightly, low and quiet like it’s a secret, like it’s paining him physically to get the words out, twisting his neck to try and look at Harry’s face.

“Anything,” Harry replies in kind, and he pushes his mouth to Eggsy’s in time to swallow his groans when he comes.

There’s a lot of breathless kissing afterwards, his hand loosely holding onto Eggsy’s wet prick while Eggsy curls up on himself, shivering. Harry’s mouth slides off Eggsy’s to land on his cheek, his jaw, his neck, the back of it, as Eggsy twists and fits them back-to-front. Harry spoons him obediently and keeps his lips firmly attached to the soft skin at the nape of Eggsy’s neck.

“You’re hard,” Eggsy murmurs after a bit, stroking a lazy hand down Harry’s arm where it crosses his chest. “C’mon, rub off against me.”

So Harry does - slides his cock between Eggsy’s sweat-slick thighs and thrusts, slow and gentle for a moment then faster when Eggsy crosses his legs at the ankles and makes his grip tighter.

“Should fuck me sometime,” Eggsy mumbles. “Ain’t ever done it, y’know? And you look fucking great when I fuck you.” Harry swears under his breath and watches Eggsy’s cheek raise as he presumably smirks. He feels the grin on his skin when Eggsy grabs his hand and raises it to his lips to kiss his knuckles. “I really fucking like you, too,” he says in a rush, linking their fingers together to set them against his chest. Harry feels the ring, all warmed up and heavy, feels the pounding of Eggsy’s heart inside his ribcage, and comes.

Distantly he hears Eggsy laugh, though not unkindly, then slip out of bed to pad to the bathroom. When he comes back he presses tile-cold toes against Harry’s shinbone until he gets up to wash up as well, but drapes himself over Harry’s back as soon as he joins Eggsy back in bed. Harry feels Eggsy’s lips touch the back of his neck, then his nose, before he settles with his arm thrown over Harry’s belly. It feels a little too warm, what with the heat on all night against the frigid seaside winter and the heavy down duvet, but Harry doesn’t dare move.

It takes him a long time to fall asleep, so it’s no surprise to wake up alone with a cold pillow next to his. Harry gets dressed as usual before going downstairs to the brightly-lit kitchen, where he finds Eggsy eating his morning toast. When Harry kisses him he finds his lips covered in crumbs and tasting like marmalade, and his tongue warm with tea.

“Morning,” Eggsy tells him, tilting his head to the side to look at Harry. “Made your old lady tea.” Indeed there is a mug on the other side of the table, steam slowly curling up from it towards the ceiling.

Harry sits and helps himself to toast and marmalade with a side of Eggsy in the morning, more guarded than usual - he’s always up and out of bed before Harry, usually waiting with a cuppa and a couple of slices of toast for him. Often, like this morning, he’s playing around on his phone, texting or reading. Right now he appears to be messaging someone, and after a few minutes he raises his phone to snap a selfie under Harry’s amused eyes.

“Oh, go on and have a laugh at us,” Eggsy says when he catches Harry smiling at him. “I ain’t the one who paints rich people for a living.”

“There is a difference between portraits and self-portraits,” Harry answers simply.

“Yeah, ‘bout ten bags, innit?” Eggsy asks around a flutter of innocent blinking. “You ever paint one?”

“A few times during my studies,” Harry recalls. “Never saw any reason to, to be perfectly honest.”

Eggsy lowers his cellphone then, and sets it down on the table to give Harry his full attention.

“You’re fucking fit, Harry,” Eggsy tells him slowly. “That’s enough reason.” When Harry opens his mouth, he kicks him in the shin. “Nope. You tell me I’m perfect, I tell you you’re hot.”

“Of course,” Harry answers. It has no right to be this endearing, how Eggsy’s facade of pride and independence is built around some sort of exuberant confidence, of not having a single care in the world and what it can think of him - of what it can _do_ to him, as if the bruises did not matter, as if nothing mattered; all the while Eggsy hides behind that wall of cockiness and uses the cracks in it as embrasures to better peer at those approaching.

“Tell me,” Eggsy starts around a mouthful of toast, “what’s the difference between a mate sending me a selfie out the barbers and some fancy bloke from the last century painting his own mug? Or worse, some poncy shit paying your sort my mum’s yearly pay for a picture of themselves?”

Harry considers it, thinks of Courbet’s pushed-back hair and wide eyes, Etty’s shyly downturned eyes.

“None,” he answers at last. “I strongly disagree with the assumption some have that portraiture should be reserved to the elite.”

“But you only paint the rich,” Eggsy counters, eyes narrowed. His smile curls up at the edges to add, “Afraid the plebs will start realising they’ve got some worth?”

Harry smiles for a moment, leaning back in his chair to finish his tea.

“Come on up,” he says. “I’ve got something to show you.”

He leads Eggsy back upstairs to the small storage room next to the guest bedroom. His hand on the handle, he spares a glance at his father’s study next to it, the door leading inside firmly shut. Neither George or him have had the strength to sort through their parents’ belongings in their respective rooms. Harry has been storing some art supplies in their mother’s study, but he doesn’t know if George has set foot in their father’s. It feels more personal than their bedroom did, those two tiny cramped rooms.

The storage room is dusty, as is the rest of the house in the off season. Harry runs a hand along the wall to feel for the switch, then flicks it on to reveal the small mess housed inside the glorified closet.

“Should be somewhere in here,” he mutters, then adds louder, for Eggsy, “when my parents passed it took my brother and I a couple of years to empty out their bedroom. Something felt wrong about strangers sleeping in our parents’ bed, with their souvenirs on the walls. We’ve kept them, still- there it is.”

Harry pulls the sheet covering the canvas off of it. It is still fitted in the frame George had dropped an obscene amount of money on, making the portrait look grander than it should be to anyone but the Hart brothers.

“My mother was a professor,” he explains, “and my father was a surgeon. But she was also a knitter, and he was a dreadful painter. Peintre du dimanche, my mother liked to say. But she knit him all these jumpers and all these scarves and sent him off early in the morning all draped in the finest wool with his papers and his watercolours. I think George has kept quite a few of them.”

On the canvas, his parents stare back, smiling forever. His mother’s usually pinned-back hair is a mess not unlike the nest of a raven - she’d gone grey early and slowly, and loved the dramatics of it. His father’s hair is still blonde on the painting, messed up by an early dip in the sea. There’s a stain of blue paint on one of the white stripes of his polo shirt, half-hidden by the elegant navy jumper tied around his shoulders. They’re sitting in the wicker chairs in the conservatory, his mother holding a copy of _A Room of One’s Own_ , his father’s signet gleaming in the eternal sunlight. In the glass pane behind them, before the blurred greenery of the gardens of the Pennings, there is the barest hint of Harry and George’s reflections, the latter holding a camera to capture the photograph that had stayed pinned to Harry’s easel for those four months of 1984.

“Harry,” Eggsy begins gravely, eyes fixed on the canvas. “ _That_ ’s the cool shit I was talking about that time at Rox’s thing.”

“We’ll go see her other exhibition when we get back,” Harry offers. 

“Yeah,” Eggsy answers absently. “They look young,” he says quietly.

Harry looks at his father’s vibrant eyes, his mother’s delicate hands, their content smiles.Decades before the slow decay that claimed their lives, they were still well into their forties at the time of the painting.

“Yes,” he agrees nonetheless. “They do.”


	19. Chapter 19

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Mars ice cream bars, and as seen in _[Painting With Light](http://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-britain/exhibition/painting-light)_ at the Tate, _[Whisper of the Muse](https://66.media.tumblr.com/ccd9d9c832f0b30b0826cdb1d673fc8e/tumblr_ocll0qptU41vvdm7qo1_1280.jpg)_ by Julia Margaret Cameron. I absolutely recommend this exhibition to anyone in London; it's running until September 25th.
> 
> As usual, [Twitter](https://twitter.com/callmealois), [Tumblr](http://sircolinfilth.tumblr.com), and a big thank you to all commenting and reading. <3

Going home feels more difficult than it has any right to. Closing down the house again is strange - closing all the blinds and shutting off the electricity makes the Pennings feel abandoned, deserted halfway up the cliffs in the quiet bit of woods it is hidden in. When they walk down the gravel path Harry catches Eggsy looking back over his shoulder at the silent house.

“You’ll turn to stone,” he tells him. “We’ll come back in the summer, when the painting’s done.”

“Yeah?” Eggsy says around a smile, standing in the shade to pull Harry close to him and kiss him, once. “When’s it going to be _started_?”

“Soon”, Harry replies.

True to his promise, he spends most of the train ride sketching Eggsy from various angles, quick, minutes-long poses that are not really poses so much as Eggsy fidgeting on his seat and changing the way he sits every five minutes. When Harry sits across the aisle, three rows behind him, Eggsy keeps throwing furtive glances over his shoulder. When Harry moves to sit in front of him, just for the pleasure of sketching his face, his eyebrows, his lips, his nose, his eyelashes, Eggsy leans in for a quick kiss before sitting back with his phone.

Harry _knows_ what he wants to paint. It’s just a matter of knowing exactly _how_.

So he draws - dozens of pages full of smudged graphite and hurried, train-shaky lines. When he was in Camberwell, Harry would spend all of his commute doing similarly shaky sketches of fellow commuters on the tube, swearing under his breath every time his impromptu models would get up and out, or suddenly move. With Eggsy, moving means the sketch is finished and that he has to turn the page - some of them will remain unfinished forever, half of Eggsy’s face and one detailed eye, the curve of his neck where it meets his shoulder, his elbow under beautifully-creased fabric. The few details standing out from a mess of lines, it reminds him of Roxy’s work. He wonders what her sketches look like.

“Would you still like to go see Miss Morton’s work when we get back?” Harry asks a little too loudly, to be heard over the sounds of the train and the distance between them, four seats ahead of Eggsy and drawing his legs insolently stretched out in front of him.

“Yeah,” Eggsy answers, straightening up in attention. “I like her shit, and she said what she got at the other gallery’s more interesting. I think it means straight-up porn.”

As it turns out, Eggsy is not wrong.

Located in a tiny gallery in Soho, Roxy’s paintings have their own wall amidst gleefully queer work, in all senses of the word. Harry remembers going to some small gallery near King’s Cross something like fifteen years ago to see what had been hyped as being the largest exhibition of works by lesbian artists, and it makes him feel almost giddy, one Monday morning in February, to see the nonchalance with which people walk about the room to stare at the paintings on the walls and the sculptures in the middle. A pair of elegantly-dressed women are examining Roxy’s work, murmuring in low tones amongst themselves.

“Fucking hell,” Eggsy mutters when the women leave and they both get a full view of the wall and the multitude of paintings on it. It’s a blur of colours so tender Harry feels like he should advert his eyes.

If what was shown at King’s Gallery was delicate and discreet and could pass as studies of women, these works can’t - the girls on the portraits were only obviously touched with eyes, but these ones… One bears a handprint on her cheek, deformed by a blissed-out smile, and the purple blur of a line around her neck cannot entirely be attributed to lighting; another spreads her thighs to show, on either side of the blur of her cunt, perfectly detailed nail scratches.

But what catches Harry’s attention is a familiar-looking scene: hips on a bed, a woman’s body tangled in a mess of sheets revealing a teasing nipple, thighs spread open unashamedly to showcase her vulva. He smiles, staring at it, smiles wide and happy: Roxanne Morton has stolen away Gustave Courbet’s dear, darling Joanna to lay her down in her own bed (the sheets are patterned with the daintiest, tiniest flowers, and the detail of it is so _touching_ , somehow) and press reverent crimson-coloured lipstick kisses to the inside of her thighs and the curve of her arse and the swell of her labia majora. Her attentions have made a mess of crimson on the woman’s vulva, and of course, _of course_ , as Roxy’s girls were called _Laura_ and _Char_ , the painting is simply called _Jo_.

“ _A brazen wink at Gustave Courbet’s_ L’Origine du Monde _,_ Jo _by Roxanne Morton perfectly showcases the artist’s fondness for short focus, allowing her to hide in blur what she does not want to show and to put at the front, in perfect, crisp detail, what she deems important. A plainly queer work,_ Jo _is also a profoundly feminist piece,_ ” Eggsy recites from the little sign posted under the painting. He butchers the pronunciation of Courbet’s painting, so Harry corrects him.

“ _L’Origine du Monde,_ ” he says, “Have you ever seen it? It’s quite famous.” Eggsy blinks up at him and takes his cellphone out to Google the painting. “If my memory serves correctly, it is on view at the Musée d’Orsay, in Paris.” Harry watches him observe the painting, looking back up at Roxy’s then down at Courbet’s. He remembers taking Eggsy to the Victoria and Albert, to the Tate Britain, how awe-inducing it was to watch Eggsy walk amongst works of art, most of which he was setting eyes on for the first time. “I’ll take you to see it.”

“In bloody _Paris_?” Eggsy asks with a raised brow and an incredulous expression on his face.

“Of course,” Harry says, casual as they please. “When the painting’s done.”

Eggsy snorts, shaking his head, but before he can say anything Roxy taps him on the shoulder, as gorgeous in casual trousers and tall boots as she’d been in her Kingsman suit. Immediately Eggsy grabs her hands to congratulate her, and Roxy points with all her elegantly restrained excitement at the red dots stuck to the signs under nearly all of her paintings. Her voice is tight with happiness when she explains to Eggsy that it means the pieces are reserved to buyers.

“I’ll buy you lunch to celebrate, yeah?” Eggsy tells her, all happy and proud.

It’s marvelous, to watch him be so obviously _proud_ of someone he’s only known for a few weeks. It’s almost puzzling, how quickly Eggsy gets attached to people, how easily he lets himself inside their lives.

“You two go,” Harry says. “I have work to do.”

They protest, and Roxy does look genuinely disappointed, which is all sorts of flattering, especially standing in a gallery of her mostly sold-out pieces; but eventually go off on their own, vanishing in a cloud of smoke.

Harry goes home, finds a ready meal of lowered fat shepherd’s pie in the back of the freezer, and eats it with two fingers of whiskey. He leaves through the sketchbook still sitting on the end table in the drawing room, flicks through it like through a flipbook to watch Eggsy get closer to him, as metaphorically as literally; to watch Eggsy reveal himself little by little. He finds the sketchbook where he drew Eggsy on the train and studies every page with a third finger of liquor, stroking gentle, feather-like fingertips down the paper. On most sketches Eggsy is staring at his cellphone or out the window, but on some he only has eyes for Harry. He loves Eggsy’s eyes on him, he realises.

They are adoring, as always - as quickly sketched as they are, they act as more of a memento than anything else, an aide-memoire to bring up memories of Eggsy staring at him, unashamed and unselfconscious. Harry knows he was a handsome lad in his youth - he grew up with the easy confidence of men people rarely say _no_ to, in answer to a variety of questions. He’s not quite sure if people rarely say _no_ to him because something in himself leads people to easily agree, or if he’s just good at asking the right questions.

Eggsy did not always say _yes_ to him, Harry recalls, switching sketchbooks to look at Eggsy in November of last year, only Galatea and gorgeously angry, saying a loud _no_ with his whole body and his whole attitude. In the other one Eggsy lays supine on the bed, Harry’s foot and easel-knee creeping close to him on the corner of the page; saying a very quiet _yes_ with everything. He wonders what changed, between Eggsy outside the Gloucester Road tube station and inside Harry’s bed in the Pennings. What turned _no_ into _yes_ ; and why he feels like there is very little Eggsy will say _no_ to, now.

For pudding, Harry has another finger of whiskey. That’s how Eggsy finds him, sitting on the sofa with an empty glass on the table and two sketchbooks on his lap. He pushes them aside carelessly to straddle Harry, linking his hands behind his head to kiss him. He tastes like cigarettes and artificial vanilla, probably lingering from soda.

“I leave you alone for three hours and you get pissed,” Eggsy murmurs against his lips.

“I am not _pissed_ ,” Harry says. When Eggsy speaks again he feels his words vibrate against his mouth, so close as they are.

“Only ‘cause you’ve been kicking your liver in the face for forty years,” he answers.

Harry kisses his mouth shut and grabs handfuls of his arse. Everything about Eggsy’s body is saying _yes_ right now, _please fuck yes_ , from the way he keeps making the tiniest moans in the back of his throat to how he is rocking minutely into Harry’s lap, trying to find a good angle to grind his cock into Harry’s belly.

Either Harry’s hands pushing him closer or his mouth moving against Eggsy’s are the right questions to ask to get an enthusiastic _yes_ ; either there’s something about Harry. Eggsy’s fingers are buried in his hair, messing it up with very careful dedication, and after a bit he pulls away to whisper a breathless _Harry_ around a very, very pleased smile. He looks almost disbelieving, eyelids fluttering, his grin big and easy. Harry turns them the best he can to push him back into the sofa and cover Eggsy’s body with his own, laying down between his spread legs to kiss him and let Eggsy rock against him. When Eggsy lays a hand on the nape of his neck he feels the ring, and it makes something stir in his belly like a curious little fish swimming in the full hand of whiskey filling up his stomach.

“You are perfect,” he tells Eggsy’s slowing heartbeat later, when he’s laid his head down on his chest after the messy handjob Eggsy had given him with shaky hands after rubbing himself off against Harry. There’s a beat of silence, then:

“You’re hot,” Eggsy says, sounding amused, twisting his neck to kiss his forehead. “Did you get any work done?”

“I have an idea,” Harry assures him. “I just need you to pose for me.”

Eggsy laughs and rubs a lazy hand up and down Harry’s back.

“Get off me and let me do my job then.”

Harry sends him off to clean up and get the Polaroid camera Eggsy had brought back home from the studio a few days before they left for Eastbourne. He changes, washes his hands, and listens to the messages on the ansaphone while he waits. Elenore is enquiring about the status of the painting, worried about the recent lack of updates. There’s an edge to her voice, and Harry is reminded he was not the first choice of the people on the committee at Penguin Classics, as his agent put it. A message from her follows - Agatha laments the lack of good news to give him and tells him she is sure the portrait will look exactly as expected. Chester’s assistant gives him information on recent sales, and Chester himself is next, asking about the portrait in his poshest tone.

_Deleted. Deleted. Deleted_ , the machine tells him.

_Avoidance_ , his brain adds unhelpfully.

Eggsy comes down the stairs, then, lacking all the grace of Madame X but with all the fire of Robert Brough and his mussed-up hair and pinked-up cheeks. He’s put on a striped polo shirt, and Harry sits him down in the kitchen, at the breakfast table. The sunlight is still good enough to see properly, but Harry switches all the lights on nonetheless; under the harsh fluorescent lighting of the kitchen the ring gleams brightly. Eggsy frowns up at him from his chair.

“Take your cell out,” Harry instructs. “Open the camera.”

He does, looking puzzled but complying as readily as always. Harry leans in to kiss his temple and switch to the front-facing camera, then gently takes his elbow to rest it on the table and adjust the angle of his arm.

“Feel like a puppet,” Eggsy mutters.

Harry doesn’t answer. He has thought about this, idly at first, as some ridiculous thing he would never paint; then with more purpose, more seriously. It has to be perfect. Eggsy already is.

He just has to be, too.

Positioning himself behind Eggsy, Harry takes a few steps back, the Polaroid camera a comforting, familiar weight in his hands. He crouches down, looking through the viewfinder and leaning back to find the best angle.

“Look into your cellphone’s lens,” Harry tells him.

Eggsy throws him a bemused glance before he does. Curiously, his posture changes when he looks straight into the lens: he tilts his chin up a little, clenches his jaw, raises his eyebrows a fraction of a centimetre. Harry moves the tiniest bit to the left, and presses down on the shutter button. Eggsy blinks as he collects the photograph in his hand and shakes it absently.

“Fucking freak,” he mutters.

“Move your arm closer to you,” Harry answers. Eggsy does. He takes another picture, then steps closer for a third, then a fourth one.

In the end, he empties the fresh cartridge Eggsy must have put in - in the end he has eight slightly different photographs laid out on the kitchen table and Eggsy by his side, both of them looming over the pictures like surgeons in the operating theater, assessing a patient’s state.

“I’ll need to buy more oil blocks,” Harry mutters absently. “You should get some film developed.”

The next morning, he leaves Eggsy at the corner of Great Russell Street and Tottenham Court Road to walk on his own to Aperture, and heads to Cornelissen’s. When they meet later to go to the studio, he takes Eggsy to the brasserie on Charlotte Street and kisses him afterwards even if he tastes like garlic butter sauce. Anticipation is thrumming in Harry’s veins, the good energy of starting something after having had to wait.

Harry works on the original portrait as a warm-up of sorts, if only for the quiet pleasure of watching and painting Eggsy, even wearing Dorian like an ill-fitting coat. He looks so different, on the Polaroid picture Harry keeps pinned to the side of his easel; so different from the eight pictures burning a hole in the inside pocket of Harry’s coat. It reminds Harry of exercises in art school, that painting, of trying to imitate the great to later pluck out what _made_ them great. He thinks of Roxy’s work: the tame portraits of professors and politicians, the intimate pictures of her girls, the audacity of her pieces in the Soho gallery.

What he has in mind is not quite _Jo_ , of course, but it’s really not _Professor James Arnold, Imperial College_ either. It’s not his parents’ wedding pictures, but it’s not the candid shots of them laughing at the dinner table sloppily taken by George. He remembers the portrait he’d made of them, the one he’d shown Eggsy back at the Pennings.

Harry sets his brush down and sets out to clean them, thoughts floating away with the familiar smell of turpentine. He is careful when he takes Dorian off the easel, then rifles through his coat pocket for the eight Polaroids. When he looks up he finds Eggsy with his camera raised, shooting the empty easel and the canvas leaning against the wall behind it.

“I feel well useless,” Eggsy says when Harry arranges the Polaroid pictures on the desk to look them over. He approaches quietly and sits astride Harry’s lap when he pushes his chair back to invite Eggsy in.

“You really aren’t,” Harry tells him quietly, eyes roaming over the pictures, over Eggsy’s face, eight times over. Zeus and Mnemosyne’s eight children, and the ninth on his lap. “This is all you.”

“Make me yours, then,” Eggsy says lightly. Harry loops an arm around him, takes his fingers between his and feels for the ring there.

They sit quietly, Harry pushing pictures away one by one like pieces in a game of draughts. In the end he keeps two side by side, stuck in zugzwang, fingers hovering hesitantly until Eggsy leans in and pushes one away, leaving the final one in the middle of the desk.

“Alright?” he asks softly.

Harry pulls both the picture and Eggsy closer, feels warm skin under one hand and cool shiny paper under the other. He closes his eyes and tries to picture it the best he can: Eggsy, young and lovely, making himself live forever; in all of Harry’s finer oils and under brushstrokes as gentle as fingertips on soft skin, brushes held by hands that have been slowly learning how to touch Eggsy as well as he deserves.

“ _Perfect_ ,” he answers.


	20. Chapter 20

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A tall drink of death, and Rembrandt's _[Artist drawing from the model](https://67.media.tumblr.com/70bdb04226bdd62288532060d3cec721/tumblr_ocylnu1WzE1vvdm7qo1_1280.jpg)_ (unfinished work).
> 
> We are starting to pick up pace. Which rhymes with Damocles.

The first two weeks of February pass as though in a blur - Harry’s hands are constantly stained with paint and he carries the stench of turpentine everywhere like all the notes of a cologne. The clicking of Eggsy’s camera follows him around, a background noise so quickly familiar he hardly even notices it anymore. Despite the Polaroid, Harry has him sit for the second painting, and for the first one, that he has taken to using as a warm-up before working on the second one.

The first time he sends Elenore and her people at Penguin Classics an update on his work, it feels nerve-wracking. He spends a good hour working and re-working the email, Eggsy respectfully not watching the screen but standing behind him all the while with his forehead pressed to the nape of Harry’s neck, where the skin has gone clammy and cold with anxious sweat.

“ _While I am well aware the due date for this work is soon approaching,_ ” he recites, “ _I was dissatisfied with my work on the portrait I had been sending you updates on, and have started working on a different piece. I am of course still working on the first portrait, and will continue to do so until it is finished_.” Harry wets his lips with a pass of his tongue and frowns at the screen before continuing, “ _I would like to thank you again for this opportunity, and hope not to disappoint. Best regards, Harry Hart._ Good Lord, this reads like a bloody apology letter from a sixth form boy.”

“That in the email?” Eggsy asks, his mouth shaping his words right over Harry’s skin. “When’s the fucking deadline even?”

“June first,” Harry answers absently, adding _deeply_ before _dissatisfied_. “I need to plan for at least a month of drying time, so ideally I’d like to be finished by the end of April.”

The silence hangs heavily in the air between them while Eggsy processes his words. Harry changes _of course_ to _naturally_.

“So we’ve got just a bit over two months left?” Eggsy asks wearily. Harry hums under his breath, hovers over _updates up_ and considers adding _so far_. “Then what? You’ve got me working for you until December. Am I supposed to just sit in a corner and look pretty?”

“The committee might ask for alterations to be made,” Harry tells him. “And in December, there is a gala for the public release of the editions. I’d rather like to take you.” He hesitates before following, “Think of it as an occasion to work on your photography.”

“So what, you’re my mentor now?” Eggsy mumbles against his skin, pressing a dry kiss to the fine hair at the back of Harry’s neck. “Not doing a very good job, are you? You’ve not asked to see the pictures I’ve taken already.”

Harry turns away from the computer to sit sideways on the chair and observe Eggsy, leaning against the backrest inches away from him.

“You have not offered,” Harry points out.

“I wanted you to ask,” Eggsy shrugs.

There’s something hidden behind his eyes and their playfulness, but before Harry can see it Eggsy tips his chin up, just a little.

“May I see them, please?”

Immediately, Eggsy pushes himself away and clambers out the drawing room and up the stairs. Harry blinks and sends the email almost absently before pouring himself two fingers of brandy and settling down on the sofa just in time for Eggsy to barge back inside the room with an envelope in his hands. It reminds Harry of sitting with his parents and his brother after his mother had gone to get film developed after an event or a vacation, all huddled close on the sofa to watch their black-and-white memories printed on glossy four-by-sixes; before their mother painstakingly arranged the best ones in thick, fabric-covered albums and wrote under all the pictures in her neat, scholarly handwriting, _George & Harry in Paris_, _1972_ , or _Bert & Harry painting at the Pennings_, _1976_ , and _George & Vivian’s engagement, 1979._

As far as one could be from from his mother’s beloved fussiness and rituals, Eggsy just drops down on the sofa next to Harry and all but throws the envelope in his lap.

“All ninety-six of them,” Eggsy says, swiping Harry’s glass of brandy out of his hand to raise it in cheers and take a sip from it. “Have fun.”

A fair amount of pictures are frank failures, the subject out of focus or underexposed, but there are gems in Eggsy’s messy piles of what basically amounts to the photographic equivalent of sketches. He guesses they were developed and kept in chronological order, so on top of the pile there is himself, lounging on the sofa on Christmas day, and all through the pile, all through those ten weeks, Harry sees himself. He’s painting, or reading, making tea and pouring liquor, smoking in some, dozing off in others. At some point he finds the picture Eggsy had taken in the bathroom at the studio, cheekily saying _You’ll live forever_ : on the shiny paper Harry in black and white is eternally staring at his reflection in the mirror, Eggsy’s cyclops eye of a lens reflected next to him and everything else forced into undecipherable blur by the large aperture. Under the crude neon lighting of the bathroom, not entirely accounted for by Eggsy’s still-learning hands, his skin is slightly overexposed, just enough to erase some of his lighter wrinkles and make wide, clear pools of his eyes.

Eggsy needs to learn technique - exposure, aperture, focus, framing, everything that Harry, with a basic knowledge in photography, is completely unable to teach him. He needs to be able to make those moments, those instants he somehow knows _when_ to capture, as stark and as efficient as they can be.

Perhaps Harry should not be surprised to find quite a few selfies in the pile of photographs: a few self-shots at first, most of them blurry; then taken in mirrors or anything to reflect Eggsy and his camera well enough. In a decrepit cottage off Marine Parade in Eastbourne, Eggsy stands alone with his camera at waist height, everything greenish where it isn’t yellowed by age and filth. Amidst the dirty mirrors and long-ago-white sinks caked with grime Eggsy’s very presence looks absurd: the impossible lovechild of Michelangelo's and Bernini’s Davids veiled by the layer of dirt and water stains covering the mirror, out of place anywhere that isn’t the pristine floors of the finest museums in the world, or the dim-lit parlour of some anonymously rich art collector, or Harry’s cluttered house and checkerboard-lit studio.

“Gorgeous,” Harry tells him after rifling through the rest of the pile - the beach, the cliffs, London, the studio. There’s a picture of Roxy, at the very end - sitting in a brightly-lit fast food restaurant with a paper cup of soda with the straw bitten into a crooked, flat mess and grease-stained brown paper in front of her in the middle of a sea of ketchup and lipstick-stained balled-up napkins. Her arm is curled protectively around a small notebook, fingers tight around a pencil with its end as chewed-on as the straw of her drink. She’s looking up at Eggsy under a light fan of eyelashes, lips pursed in concentration. The way her lipstick smudged off when she ate and drank, leaving a slight pink tint right at the bottom of her philtrum and just under her bottom lip makes her look younger, more approachable than the gorgeously confident lady Harry met at her viewing at King’s gallery. “There’s something very fragile about your photographs, very vulnerable. But easily so. Something that says it is alright for your models to be seen. Unstaged, and unstageable.”

Eggsy _preens_. His cheeks go pink, his smile curls into something pride begs him to nip in the bud and ends up pinched like happiness is about to make his mouth break into the largest grin. He looks down, blinking a few times at the glass of brandy he is still holding. Harry leans in to take it from him and give him a kiss in exchange, tasting liquor on his lips.

“Have you thought about studying photography?” Harry asks him. Eggsy blinks.

“Sure,” he says slowly, “because I’ve absolutely got cash to spare to study fucking _photography_.”

“You’d get scholarships. And if you don’t, I will take care of it. If that’s something you would like to do.”

“ _Harry_ ,” Eggsy starts around a shrill burst of laughter, “It ain’t just the money to pay for uni. If I go to school, I can’t work, I can’t make rent, my stepdad kicks me out.”

“A summer course, then,” Harry hurries to add. “You have said so yourself - you will be significantly less busy when we finish the portrait.” Eggsy shakes his head, looking away and crossing his arms. “I could ask my agent if she knows any artists working with film photography. Hell, now that I think about it, I have some people’s cards-”

“They’d want nothing to do with a fucking chav,” Eggsy says, getting up and swiping the pile of photographs off Harry’s lap to stuff them back in the envelope. “I’m going out for a fag.”

He leaves the envelope on the table and Harry on the sofa with his mouth half-open, blinking after him and takes a large swallow of his drink to force down all the words he still has on his tongue.

Harry doesn’t bring it up again. 

The next morning, he goes downstairs after his morning routine only to run into Eggsy on the stairs on his way to shower. Harry collects both a morning kiss that tastes of honey, milk and jam before he sends him off to wash up, and the post scattered on the floor under the mail slot. Usually, he doesn’t pay much attention to it - most of it is bills or adverts - but this time there’s a sturdy manila envelope with his address handwritten on it in big, loopy cursive, so he takes it with him to the kitchen. Eggsy has left him a cup of tea on the table and two cold slices of toast, but Harry disregards both for now and opens the envelope. 

Inside, he finds pages torn from a notebook: on one of them Eggsy’s smile detailed in graphite is stealing the focus from the few economical lines sketching out his camera and his hands, the mole at his throat as starkly visible as it is in Harry’s eyes; but everything else barely-there, sketchy lines blurred by the pass of careless hands over the soft graphite working and reworking at his mouth and neck. Harry can picture these hands, small but strong, holding the pencil and bringing it up to worry the wooden end between teeth that appear starkly white against crimson red lipstick. Roxy’s signature is present at the bottom, _Morton_ in the same loopy, overlapping cursive, the bar of the _t_ big enough to cross out the rest of her name.

Two of the other pages are other sketches: one of Eggsy without his camera where Roxy focuses on his fingers laid out on the sticky table like a mess of seafoam licking up the shore, the rest of him disappearing into one, two lines to suggest the shape of his head and arm; another where she’s drawn one of his eyes and his mouth, his expression coaxed into a pantomime of winking by Roxy’s focus. The third page, though, is filled with a few lines of cursive.

_Dear Mr Hart_ , it reads _, Harry - I thought you might quite like to have these. Eggsy has told me you have plenty of your own, but we might have different perspectives. Best of luck with the portrait._ She signed _Roxy_ , the tail of the _y_ looping extravagantly to cross out the rest of her name.

Harry finds a wide frame and a triptych mat in a cabinet in the drawing room, and arranges Roxy’s sketches face down on the glass, over the mat, before fastening the backing again. She probably hasn’t set the graphite. He wonders if it will stain the glass, if the sun will blur the elusiveness of them into something illegible, like the opposite of a Polaroid developing.

“Morton originals,” Harry says when Eggsy comes down, gesturing at the frame he’s left on the kitchen table afterwards with his cup of tea, “Wherever should I hang them?”

“You fucking freak,” Eggsy blurts out, but he’s blushing, staring wide-eyed at himself in graphite, paper pale like the sensitive skin at the back of his thighs against the dark mat, surrounded by a fussy intricate golden frame. “Probably in the loo with your creepy dead dog and your creepy dead bugs,” he says, but with all the tightness of someone trying to lighten the mood.

“Ah, but there’s nothing creepy about this young man, he would not fit in at all,” Harry says around a smile and a mouthful of toast. “He is as delicate and gorgeous as those butterflies, though.”

“Please don’t compare me to your dog,” Eggsy answers in a pleading voice.

Harry does not, and hangs Roxy’s sketches in the drawing room, under a view of the Welsh Valleys in patient oils and next to an eerie rendition of Neuschwanstein in pale watercolours.

“I quite like you all framed in gold and laying under glass,” he tells Eggsy before he can kiss him to keep the words from coming out, and does so anyway when Eggsy blinks owlishly at him with his mouth half-open.

“I’d break the fucking glass,” Eggsy murmurs petulantly against his lips, and Harry strokes fingertips to his cheekbones until he can frame that face with his hands instead.

They spend the entire day at the studio - a fraction of time on Dorian and then hours on Eggsy. The first few days of working on the new portrait, Harry would cajole his face into place to keep the same angle as the Polaroid; now Eggsy knows which pose to assume.

“You’ve got the pic,” he asks that day, scarcely moving his lips, “Why d’you need me there at all?”

“I paint better from life,” Harry explains distractedly. “Nothing compares to seeing your model in real life, in volume, full size. Breathing and living. A photograph will never be able to give the same feeling as a real person sitting a few feet away.” Pensively, he adds: “And I enjoy looking at you.”

Working on something fresh in so many ways is doing wonders for Harry’s mood, he realises that night, when they go home past nine and unpack Chinese takeaway on the dining room table. He can’t take his eyes off Eggsy, and when he can, it’s only to put his hands and his lips on him instead. Some nights they end up going to bed quite a long time before going to sleep, and that night he kisses the taste of sweet-and-sour sauce off Eggsy’s lips and pushes his hands up his shirt to palm at his chest, his ribs, his nipples.

When he moves away Eggsy is left sprawled out on the bed, arms wide open and lazy hands twitching and clenching when Harry pushes his tee shirt out of the way to suck on his nipples instead, slow but insistent. He trails his lips down Eggsy’s belly, noses at his bellybutton to feel his abdominal muscles clench, and undoes his fly quickly before following the slide of the rough fabric down his big thighs with his mouth, kissing inch after revealed inch of canvas-pale and silk-soft skin. Eggsy’s leg twitches when Harry shapes his lips over the knobs of his knee, then when runs them down the line of his shinbone and mouths at the prominent bones in his ankles, the delicate tendons making paths on his heartbreakingly soft feet. There’s a fussy moment where Eggsy takes his trousers off, but then he spreads his legs as they were and Harry’s mouth can return to those long feet and suck a toe in his mouth. He doesn’t quite know how he ends up curled between the vee of Eggsy’s spread legs with two of Eggsy’s toes in his mouth and Eggsy’s other foot shaped over the bulge of his erection, clumsily stroking it through Harry’s trousers; but he’s not going to complain.

Instead Harry opens his fly one-handed, clumsily, and pulls his cock out to let Eggsy press the cool, soft skin at the sole of his foot against it. When he hears some rustling he looks up to find Eggsy loosely stroking his cock with dark eyes at half-mast on Harry, and drools desperately around Eggsy’s toes. Only when Eggsy starts making pained little sounds in the back of his throat does Harry hurriedly make his way up his body to mouth at his cock, and lets Eggsy make a mess of his shirt with the soles of his feet when he brings his legs up to allow Harry to lavish attention on his bollocks.

“Turn around,” Harry tells him, pulling away to encourage Eggsy to switch to laying on his belly instead, wriggling on the mattress to take his pants off. Harry pushes on his feet until Eggsy gets the message and folds his knees under himself. The position leaves him deliciously bare and filthily exposed - some sort of pornographic play on the Flandrin pose, if someone had pushed on the neck of a so-curled up lad to invite him to kneel. “Oh, my dear, gorgeous boy,” Harry breathes, pushing hurried kisses to every knob of Eggsy’s spine, one to a mole atop his arse, going down to the part of him. He brushes fleeting, adventurous fingers over the crack of Eggsy’s arse, ghosts over his hole, tight and dry and warm and begging for kisses.

So kisses he gives, all lips and tongue over what he feels is the most private, the most intimate part of Eggsy. It makes him heady, makes him feel filthy in a way that makes his pulse race demandingly in his cock and bollocks; so much he doesn’t hear Eggsy’s disorganised babble at first.

“Y’should fuck me soon,” he says, broken and beautiful, “I’ve never, I told you, I’ve never, and when I fuck you you look fucking _great_ , I want that if you do, anything you want, fucking hell, _Harry_ , anything…”

“Not tonight,” Harry answers. Eggsy reaches behind himself and spreads his arse open for Harry to take, the way he spreads his whole self open for Harry. He thinks fleetingly of pinned butterflies, kisses the tip of Eggsy’s fingers and continues, “But I will, I bloody want to, have you seen yourself?”

Eggsy doesn’t answer, just curses disjointedly and pushes back against Harry’s face when he goes back in to run his tongue over Eggsy’s hole. Eggsy’s hand disappears, and when his breath hitches Harry guesses he’s gone and started wanking himself off. The idea burns a path down from his brain to pulse in his prick and bubble up in a moan, and Harry presses his mouth impossibly closer to feel Eggsy’s empty hole clench when he comes with a broken cry. He wants that velvety, saliva-soaked skin on the desperate head of his cock, and covers Eggsy’s body with his own to thrust between his cheeks, rubbing over his hole over and over while Eggsy breathes and groans, head turned to the side and drool painting a glaze over his lips and his cheek. When he reaches back, this time it’s to push his cheeks closer around Harry’s cock and give him a warm channel to thrust into, and the deliberateness, the eagerness of it makes Harry come quicker than he remembers doing in years, painting neat white lines down the flushed skin of Eggsy’s lower back.

“I don’t ever wanna be with anyone else if it ain’t half as good as it is with you,” Eggsy mumbles after Harry has stripped off and gathered his trembling body in his arms.

“ _Yes_ ,” Harry says, running fingers over Eggsy’s ring, the moles behind his ear, the exhausted moue of his lips, the curve of his arse, the knobs of his spine. “Anything you want.”

Before he falls asleep, Harry idly watches Eggsy drift off. He thinks of the portrait, Eggsy’s photographs, Roxy’s cursive, his mother’s own, his mother’s neat cursive running like a bow to decorate photographs with not-quite-titles, like plaques at an exhibition under works of art. _Eggsy_ , he wants to write under Roxy’s sketches, framed in gold; _Eggsy_ , he wants to write in the air around him now, framed in Harry’s arms.


	21. Chapter 21

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  _Stranger Things_ , which I blame this chapter's lateness on, and _[The Damned](https://65.media.tumblr.com/c6c08e0e07ca3a40bca5788204defee1/tumblr_odbjo36ljS1vvdm7qo1_500.jpg)_ by Roberto Ferri (2006).
> 
> [Tumblr](http://sircolinfilth.tumblr.com) and [Twitter](https://twitter.com/callmealois), where you can follow my abysmal writing progress every week.

The second Tuesday of February begins as most days do: Harry wakes alone, gets up, puts on his slippers to cross the room to the ensuite; showers,shaves, combs his hair and gets dressed. On his way down the stairs he hears the clinking of cutlery, the fridge opening and closing, Eggsy’s quiet socked footsteps on the kitchen tile.

“Made your tea,” he calls towards the stairs just as Harry takes the last step.

“Thank you, love,” Harry answers, and he presses the button on the ansaphone absently.

_Harry_ , the mechanical voice says, _This is Chester King._ Something about the tone of his voice makes Harry stop abruptly, standing in the threshold to the kitchen. Eggsy looks up curiously, chewing a piece of jam-covered toast. Harry backs away into the dining room, looking at the machine through the open entrance to the hallway. _What on Earth are you thinking with that ridiculous painting? We have been over this time and time again, that sort of thing is not what is expected of you. You know what I think of your… Dalliances, shall we say,_ Chester continues, _Lord knows we’ve been over this as well. But if this is the sort of thing this young man has been planting in your head, well, perhaps it would be wise of you to move on._ Chester pauses, sighs, his breath crackling over the receiver. _I’ll be expecting to hear from you soon._

The ansaphone beeps, and follows with a message from a telemarketer. Harry crosses the dining room to delete the message, and the one from Chester as well.

“Fucking prick,” Eggsy mumbles when Harry enters the kitchen and takes a sip of his tea.

“Indeed,” he answers, leaning down for a kiss. When Eggsy doesn’t turn to meet him, he kisses his cheek instead, insistently, before Eggsy turns to press his lips to Harry’s, sweet and sticky with jam.

When they go to the studio, Harry paints all day with hardly any breaks - even when Eggsy gets up after Harry ignored his past offers of tea, and, after the third one, of a glass of whiskey. He paints until Eggsy has to turn all the lights on, until the London sky outside grows dark then the greyish brown of the city sky lit up by streetlights more than by stars. His hands shake when they take a cab home, and Eggsy quietly pours him a finger of cognac and stuffs the glass in his hand. He disappears to the kitchen for a few minutes and returns to open the window nearer to Harry and hand him a lit cigarette. The microwave hums in the background, the room so quiet Harry can hear the slow burning of cigarette paper. Eggsy offers him a crystal ashtray and sits right next to Harry on the sofa.

“Peas and toast,” Eggsy mumbles into his shoulder. “Like when I was small and I got sick. Hope you’re happy.”

“Tell me about your childhood,” Harry breathes, eyes closed. He wets his lips with a drink of cognac, licks it off with a smoke-soaked tongue.

“Ain’t much to tell, really,” Eggsy says. “You probably don’t want to hear about, you. Me dad died when I was five, then mum got together with Dean when I was nine or something.”

“Must’ve been tough,” Harry offers.

“Yeah,” Eggsy shrugs. “He was nice at first, you know? I remember he brought me a creme egg when he stayed over at first, so I started looking forward to it. Proper dog training. Then I realised it was the change if you bought a bottle of Absolut at Tesco with two tenners.” He snorts humorlessly. “Realised when I was thirteen and buying some with me mates.”

“When did you start smoking?” Harry asks when Eggsy plucks the cigarette from his lips and takes a long drag. The microwave beeps in the background. Neither of them moves.

“When I was about fourteen or so, I think?” Eggsy breathes out a tidy little stream of smoke. “Dean taught me how to roll, he thought it was a fucking laugh, his bird’s kid burning his fingers on a nugget. I’d steal the butts from his spliffs and save ‘em, then with the lads we’d open them and roll up.” When Harry remains quiet, Eggsy gets up and walks off to the kitchen, throwing “Told you you didn’t want to hear about it.”

Harry joins him in the kitchen, standing with his back to Harry, buttering toast with a Tupperware container full of steaming peas next to him.

“What about your mother?”

“She started drinking, after my dad died,” Eggsy says. “I mean, they’ve always drank a bit, but it was something else. She’d stopped smoking when she had me, she told me, and then she started again.” He quiets down a little. “She quit all that shit when she got pregnant with Daisy, but she’s started again, recently. The baby’s just turned two.”

Eggsy turns, a plate in each hand, laden with peas and toast. The butter is melting, dripping down on the peas in shiny golden puddles.

“Thank you,” Harry tells him. “Tell me about Daisy?”

So Eggsy does - he explains how her teeth came in early and she cried, although she’d never been a fussy baby, how his stepdad would pluck ice cubes from his mum’s wine to hand them to Daisy to suck on and that time Eggsy had seen him and had screamed at him to stop, how his mum had kept sipping at her glass of rose and told him _not to talk to Dean like that, Eggsy, least he’s taking care of her, him._ He tells Harry about Dean either bringing Daisy an armful of plush toys or foregoing baby food in favour of cigarettes, about his mother cleaning up Daisy’s bum with a make-up removing wipe, once, because they’d all forgotten to buy baby wipes, how Daisy had gotten a horrible rash for days afterwards. Eggsy talks about Daisy’s stumbling mouth, the way she manages _egg_ but not _Eggsy_ , _dee_ for _daddy_ or _Dean_ , _mee_ for _mummy_ or _Michelle_.

Because it’s not all terrible, horrid things that wouldn’t look out of place in a procedural drama. Talking about his sister apparently makes Eggsy’s mouth break out in a run, and Harry starts feeling a little less like a concerned headmaster asking about a student’s home life.

Eggsy tells him about watching Dean hold baby Daisy for the first time, stone-cold sober after spending twelve hours in the hospital with Michelle and Eggsy, four hours after he’d allowed Eggsy to join them in the room, about the two of them putting a shelf together in the living room back when Eggsy was seventeen and his mother laughing at them at the pile of screws they’d ended up with afterwards, about how he’d tensed up when Dean went quiet before breaking into howling laughter. The summer when he was ten where Dean got into betting and came back one night from Ladbrokes and they’d beaten Denmark, three to zero. Eggsy tells him Dean took him and Michelle to KFC on Finchley Road and they’d eaten two buckets of fried chicken to celebrate, Dean and Michelle splashing rum - rum Dean had snuck in Ladbrokes in an empty carton of juice - in their sodas after every sip. He tells Harry about being fifteen, sharing a spliff with his mother on the sofa and laughing themselves to tears watching Peter Serafinowicz on BBC Two. 

His face goes fond and relaxed at the memories, but seconds later he tenses up again, like he’s remembering the worst ones. In the middle of a story about Christmas when he was eight, when his mother bought him a array of gifts from the ninety-nine pence shop down the road, and he’d laid down in the torn wrapping paper afterwards to make the indoors equivalent of snow angels, Eggsy stops abruptly to frown down and push the couple of peas remaining on his plate, sending them rolling into each other like billiards balls.

“It’s alright to have fond memories,” Harry tells him quietly. When Eggsy shakes his head, eyes downturned, he continues. “It doesn’t make the bad ones any less real.”

“Yeah, sure,” Eggsy says. “I know that.” He blinks, then looks up at Harry. “Pudding?”

They have jaffa cakes for pudding, Eggsy methodically nibbling on the hard chocolate, then on the sponge, then on the orange jelly. When Harry takes him to bed, he still tastes like dark chocolate at the corner of his lips, where Harry kisses him, slow and gentle.

“Harry, no,” he whispers, turning his head to the side.

Harry gives the apple of his cheek a parting kiss and moves away. When Eggsy turns on his side, his back facing Harry, he gives him a little glance over his shoulder. Harry molds his front to Eggsy’s back and throws an arm over his torso, sets his lips against the nape of his neck, and waits for his breathing to go deep and regular.

When Harry wakes up the next morning, the bed is empty.

He sighs, puts on his slippers and goes to shower, shave, and get dressed before going downstairs. The kitchen is empty save for a cup of tea and two cold slices of toast left on a paper towel in the middle of the table.

With breakfast, Harry checks his email to find a message from Elenore cautiously praising the new painting. From the members of the committee, the praise is strangely more effusive. One of the women calls it _Groundbreaking_ , another _Incredibly modern_. From Agatha, whom he’d BCC’d the email to, Harry gets no such compliments.

_Please keep in mind that this is no time for experiments,_ she writes. _Tread cautiously. You were not their first choice. That sort of thing is not what is expected of you._

Harry deletes her email, finishes his toast, and is wiping the kitchen table clean when Eggsy bustles inside. He reeks of weed but Harry accepts the cold-lipped kiss he presses to his mouth anyway. His eyes are bright and shiny under heavy lids, his cheeks pinked up by the cold outside.

“You look rather like a proper nymph, like this,” Harry tells him, raking greedy fingers through Eggsy’s messy hair. “What sort of trouble did you get up to so early in the morning?”

“Had me a smoke in the park,” Eggsy tells him around a smile so big it seems it would stretch further if it could. He runs the frigid tip of his nose up the side of Harry’s jaw, seems to breathe in his aftershave. “Got us some half-price chocolates at Waitrose and ate them all.”

“How sweet of you,” Harry murmurs.

“T’was Valentine’s day, yesterday,” Eggsy mumbles, clumsily pushing Harry back against the kitchen counter. “Should have sucked you off or something.”

“There is nothing you _should_ have done,” Harry tells him. “There is nothing you _should_ do.”

“‘Course there is.” Eggsy’s not looking at him, heavy eyes at half-mast and lips shiny where he keeps licking at them. “‘Else you’ll just get bored of me.”

Harry sees a flash of gold when one of Eggsy’s hands shoots up to cradle his jaw. His mouth has gone slack under Eggsy’s, his hands slipping off from where they’d been holding onto his hips.

“I would never,” Harry answers at last. “Please, Eggsy, stop.”

Eggsy is off him in a flash, backing away until he hits the kitchen table, raising his hands in surrender.

“Maybe you’re right,” Eggsy says, chin tipped up and speech slow, like he’s not entirely figuring out what he’s saying before the words leave his mouth. “Should keep me under glass. This way you could look at me all you want without ever having to touch me, yeah?”

“What on earth is that supposed to mean?” Harry calls after him when Eggsy stalks out the kitchen. He’s stumbling into his trainers, one hand on the wall for balance and the other fiddling with his pack of cigarettes. “Eggsy. Talk to me.”

“‘Cause you’re so good at talking,” Eggsy mutters. He’s gone and put his left foot in his right trainer. “Shit fuck hell.”

“Indeed,” Harry says. He kneels at Eggsy’s feet, ignores his hips screaming at him in protest, and takes hold of his calf to pull his foot out. He nudges it in the proper trainer and ties the shoelaces before doing the same for the other shoe. “There. Go out if you want to, but I’d rather we talk about this. I am too old for this sort of shit, Eggsy.” He sighs, gets up laboriously, and stares at Eggsy. He shakes his head. “Go sit on the sofa.”

Eggsy does.

Harry fusses around in the kitchen for a bit, making tea and focusing on breathing. He brings Eggsy the cup and sets it on the coffee table. Eggsy remains sitting, arms crossed, seemingly trying to make himself smaller - either to hide away, either to take up less room.

“Don’t suppose you’d Irish that for me,” he mumbles, pulling the corner of his lip up in a smile.

Harry brings the whole decanter of whiskey and a glass, pours himself a full hand and tips a finger of liquor into Eggsy’s tea. He sits on a chair opposite the sofa and takes a long sip.

“Talk.”

“It don’t work too well for me, the talking thing,” Eggsy mumbles into the lip of his cup before he takes a sip. “M’still lit, I’ll get all rambly and shit. Like last night, yeah? You asked these bits about my family and I just, I tell you everything, even the shit I don’t tell people because-” Eggsy takes a sip of tea, rubs a hand over his frown. “Because if I do people think it ain’t much, all the bad shit, all- you say it don’t matter, that there are nice bits, but it does ‘cause _why_ can’t it be like this all the time and _why_ can’t it be all bad, y’know, if it were all bad all the time it’d be easier to leave ‘em to it, then there’s the baby and. And me mum, she ain’t perfect but she ain’t… She ain’t all bad all the time, and she’s trying so hard, for me and for the baby…”

Eggsy trails off then, hands cupped around his tea, staring into space, somewhere miles away and years ago and right now in South Hampstead. Harry looks at him and takes another sip of whiskey.

“When my father started getting ill,” he starts, “I was furious with him. He started forgetting about his great-granddaughters, then his grandson, then us, then our mother. He was short with everyone, all the time. Cross with his wife. Her arthritis started getting really bad around the same time his Alzheimer did, and when she started becoming unable of care for him, he would get downright vicious with her.” Harry looks down at his hands, his fingers tight around the crystal. “His doctors assured us it was normal, that he was not angry at her but at himself, for being unable to take care of himself and his wife. But still - I was furious.”

“Why’re you telling me this?” Eggsy asks, his voice small.

“Because sometimes, it is alright not to love our cherished ones all the time. I adored my father. Hell, Eggsy, I still do. He was an incredible man. But no one is perfect.”

Eggsy’s eyes go hard, for a second, then soft. He blinks, takes a drink from his cup, then looks straight at Harry.

“You tell me I’m perfect.”

Harry smiles at him.

“You are,” he says, softer than he means to. “Perfection, as I see it, is a subjective thing. And to me, you are.”

Eggsy keeps looking at him like he can see right through Harry, or at least like he’s trying to.

“Come sit with me?” he asks.

Harry does.

Immediately, Eggsy leans against him, setting his head against Harry’s shoulder. He leaves a hand between them, fingers loose, begging to be held, so Harry takes them. Eggsy’s hands are not smooth. He has scars on his knuckles, a long, silvery one down the front of his hand; his nail beds have been nibbled on so often tiny bits of skin are torn all around them. Harry’s fingers are dry and peeling from being washed so frequently and covered in hard calluses from paintbrushes and pencils. He’s beginning to get age spots, and the skin of his knuckles has gone wrinkly with the pull of years.

“When the painting’s done,” Eggsy murmurs, “M’scared you’ll get bored of me. Dunno what I’ll do.”

“Anything you want,” Harry breathes into his hair. “Take pictures. Find work. Study. You can do anything you want.”

After that many words, silence rings in Harry’s ears. Out the corner of his eye he only sees Eggsy’s hair, the bird’s wing of his eyebrow, the tip of his nose.

“Yeah,” Eggsy says at last. “Sure.” He finishes his tea and sets the cup back down, turns to press a warm kiss to Harry’s lips, hesitant, eyes half-open. “For now there’s your painting.”

But Eggsy’s eyes are still lazy, his body still tight and curled up next to Harry’s. Fleetingly, Harry wonders what Eggsy will think of this day, years down the road - if he’ll keep thinking about the bad bits and not let himself think fondly of the good ones. If Eggsy’s insecure, brittle mind even lets him build any good memories anymore.

“For now we are going back to bed,” Harry says with finality. “No one had eaten the entire loaf of bread, and a few chocolates do not a breakfast make when one’s gone and decided to, how do you say, _light up_.” He closes his eyes to say, quietly, “And I’d quite like waking up next to you, at least once.”

Later, once he’s got Eggsy stripped down to nothing but his shorts and a tee-shirt and the signet ring, curled up next to him in a mess of duvet and blankets, Harry watches his eyelids flutter, his sea-green eyes disappearing and reappearing behind their butterfly wing-like batting, until they close for good. The fine, delicate skin of his eyelids is almost yellow in the low light, bruised with exhaustion, purplish veins running through it like a spider’s web. _He is a dryad, not a nymph_ , Harry tells himself. Erato, perhaps, for the way she shares her name with the muse of lyric poetry; Erato, who charms the sight.

And Harry lays in bed and lets himself be thoroughly charmed.


	22. Chapter 22

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Time is a social construct.
> 
>  _[Ton laying](https://67.media.tumblr.com/e16fc92b3232b4396cfb2e036eeec536/tumblr_odphe3M7ii1vvdm7qo1_1280.jpg)_ by Maurice Heerdink, part of the _Caught in light_ series, 2004. Painted in acrylics on black paper, if I'm not mistaken.
> 
> [Tumblr](http://sircolinfilth.tumblr.com) and [Twitter](https://twitter.com/callmealois), for ramblings about spy cocks and pictures of tiny wee kittens.

When Harry wakes a couple of hours later, nap-disoriented and with a sour taste in his mouth, he blinks at the window and the cold light streaming through the glass. He went to bed in his trousers and jumper, not planning on falling asleep next to Eggsy, and the cashmere feels too hot, almost stiflingly so, under the thick duvet.

“You awake?” a small, sleep-hoarse voice asks behind him. Harry cranes his neck to look over his shoulder before turning around to face Eggsy, adorably rumpled with pillow creases on his cheek. “Said you wanted to wake up with me in bed.”

“I did,” Harry tells him. His voice comes out strangled by the sandman’s hand. “Thank you,” he adds in a whisper.

Eggsy blinks, hiding half his face in the pillow, leaving one eye visible and cracked open to study Harry. He wonders if Eggsy does that every morning, still hazy with sleep, while Harry himself is still out. What he thinks about, in this stretch of time between him waking up and Harry doing the same, minutes or hours later. Harry has no idea what time Eggsy gets up in the mornings. At bedtime he is always out like a light in minutes.

“M’sorry,” Eggsy mumbles into the pillow.

“It’s alright,” Harry tells him. “You are young. It’s alright.” Eggsy watches him silently. “When the painting’s done, I will take you on a vacation. Lord knows we both need it.”

“Yeah?” Eggsy says, eyelids fluttering shut, a smile ghosting over his lips. He worries his bottom lip between his teeth, like he’s chewing on the smile itself, shyly trying to erase it. “Where to?”

Hesitantly, Harry scoots closer to fit a hand to Eggsy’s neck, stroking over the sharp lines of his jaw with his thumb. Eggsy hums approvingly under his breath, shifting closer until their knees knock together, moving his legs to press one of his feet against Harry’s.

“Paris, I’ve said,” Harry answers. He studies Eggsy’s relaxed face, still half-hidden in the pillow. “I have a flat there, did I tell you? Bought it ten years ago. I’ll take you there. We’ll go to museums, we’ll eat pastries.”

“The Louvre and shit?” Eggsy whispers. Harry barely feels his jaw move under his fingers.

“And shit,” Harry confirms. When Eggsy huffs out a quiet breath oflaughter, a smile pulls at his lips of its own accord. “Walk along the Seine, have some overpriced crepes. It gets sweltering hot in the summer, that I remember. Hotter than London, even. When we get back we’ll go to Eastbourne, go for swims and eat ninety-nines on the pier.” He stares at Eggsy’s face, the curve of his mouth, the fan of his eyelashes. “You’ll look gorgeous in the summer light. Glazed gold and eyes turned blue as the sea.”

Eggsy, curled on the bed as Antiope under Watteau’s paintbrush, cracks his eye open again to look down at Harry’s hand. He turns his face to find it with his mouth, presses a dry kiss to the inside of Harry’s palm.

“When the painting’s done,” he murmurs.

The next day they are back at the studio, and all the days after that.

Mid-March, Harry finishes the first portrait and sends a quick picture to the people at Penguin Classics with Elenore and Agatha in blind carbon copy. Eleonore replies with praise and a note regarding her impatience to see the second portrait, but Agatha is quiet. When Harry meets with her later that week, he finds her frowning and tight-lipped.

“I don’t understand,” she says slowly, staring at her tablet. The blueish light reflects up on her face, highlighting her sharp penciled eyebrows, the purse of her lips, the lines in her forehead. “People expect a certain type of thing from you, Harry.”

“Perhaps could you consider I might wantto do a different type of thing,” Harry answers cooly.

Agatha purses her lips. Harry blinks at her and pulls the corners of his mouth up in a lamb-like smile.

“We have always been loyal to each other, Harry,” she says slowly, voice as sickeningly and artificially sweet as a spoonful of Splenda. “I work in your best interest.” When Harry doesn’t answer, she sighs and leans back inside her chair to add, “I know you better than some chav you’ve found Lord knows where.”

All the blood in Harry’s body runs cold. He scoffs, rubs a hand over his face and stares at Agatha, sitting rigid in her chair. The screen of her tablet has gone black and the sunlight highlights the fingerprints on the glass, like a palette scraped clean of its colours. Behind her is a landscape done in splotchy watercolours of some canal in Venice. Harry doesn’t recognise the signature.

“You should move your canal,” Harry tells her. When she looks taken aback, he adds, “The Venice watercolours. Direct sunlight falls on it every day. The colours will fade.” Agatha sighs, shakes her head.

“I thought people might see it under asort of natural spotlight, this way,” she says. When Harry gets up, she sighs again. “Please, Harry, think about it.”

“Think about the canal,” Harry answers, and he walks out.

He comes home to an empty house and drinks a finger of scotch sitting in the dining room, then takes a cab to the studioand eats lunch staring at Eggsy on the canvas, then paints until the sun starts to go down. His hand holds the paintbrush as gently as he holds Eggsy’s fingers when they walk down the street, as carefully as he does when he leads Eggsy upstairs after a long day, when they head to bed early then don’t sleep for another hour. Putting a glint in Eggsy’s eyes, on the canvas or in a dim-lit hallway with a hand on the lightswitch, makes something stir happily in Harry’s belly. On the canvas on the easel the brush lovingly makes Eggsy’s cheekbones grow high and pink; on the canvas on Eggsy’s body Harry’s fingers do the same, push a rush of blood up to Eggsy’s cheeks or down to his cock.

After the incident last month, Harry had been wary of being too forward with Eggsy, so he’d kept waiting until a little over a week later Eggsy had stood over him in bed, sideways on the mattress with one arm on either side of Harry’s head, to ask _Don’t want me anymore?_ So Harry had kissed him, because it seemed simpler than to try to explain with words, and had coaxed Eggsy onto his back to suck his cock, nice and slow, until Eggsy pushed him away and pulled him close to hook a thigh over Harry’s hip and rut against his belly. _I’ll never tire of you_ , Harry had breathed, low like a secret, like something coming from inside his chest as muffled and as sure as a heartbeat; Eggsy had kissed him, then, licking into his mouth like he could taste the words and swallow them down.

Harry doesn’t quite notice the light growing dimmer and dimmer until he finds himself squinting at Eggsy’s lips on the canvas, the freckle he’d painted on them and kissed so many times. He blinks, puts the paintbrush down, and turns on a small light to clean up.

In the middle of washing his hands, the door to the studio opens and Eggsy walks in, calling Harry’s name.

“Stopped by the house and you weren’t there,” he says when he comes over to link his arms around Harry’s waist, leaning his forehead against the space between his shoulderblades. Over the stink of turpentine, Harry can smell cigarettes and cider on Eggsy’s breath. “It’s looking good, the painting,” he adds.

“Yes,” Harry tells him, turning around inside Eggsy’s arms to face him, leaning against the sink. “Quite easy with such a handsome subject, I think.”

“Yeah?” Eggsy whispers, shuffling closer to press his pleased grin to Harry’s mouth. Harry hums, kisses him, once, twice. “M’starving,” he says. “Rox and I only had some crisps all afternoon.”

Harry takes him to Dishoom on Boundary Street to feast on prawn koliwada and rice and naan, chole bhatura and gunpowder potatoes; malai kulfi for pudding and a monsooned cobbler to soothe the heat of the spices and make Eggsy’s lips cool and plush under his when they stumble out the restaurant to find a cab home.

“How was your evening?” Harry asks him in the car, feeling lazy with the overabundance of excellent food and the two pints of velvety stout he’d indulged in. Eggsy looks much the same, leaning heavily against the headrest, eyes at half-mast and shining in the streetlights lace-filtering through the rain-splattered window.

“Good,” he says, “Rox took me to the Courtauld Gallery, ‘cause she wanted to do some sketches of some, uh, post-impressionist shit?” Eggsy frowns. “They had these nice ceilings, though, I took pictures. Then we went to a pub on Bow Street and…” He trails off, frowns at Harry and smiles shyly. “This ain’t interesting at all.”

“Of course it is,” Harry assures him. “The Courtauld is a lovely place. I remember those ceilings. Not all art is kept in frames.”

Eggsy looks at him and purses his lips, blinking lazily.

“Are you being ridiculous right now?”

“Always,” Harry answers gravely, and he delights in the way Eggsy closes his eyes to laugh, his teeth glistening in the low light that does nothing to hide the blush staining his cheeks.

This is what is truly ridiculous: that anyone could be lucky enough to get this, Eggsy’s quiet laughter and his heavy eyes, the press of his lips and of his cock when he fucks Harry that night and pushes tender kisses on the side of his neck, cradles Harry’s half-hard prick in his skilled grip and bites his skin around mouthfuls of moans that keep spilling out of his lips. _This_ , Eggsy’s cock deliciously hard for him even when Harry’s doesn’t quite get the message, the front of his big thighs pressed to the back of Harry’s to fuck deeper into him, to try and push sounds up and out of him. _This_ , the fact that Eggsy spills inside the condom and keeps fucking him with pained little sounds of oversensitivity, shaking and toying with Harry’s cock until he comes, his dick softer than hard and his come coating Eggsy’s palm.

Afterwards Harry lays quietly for a long time, the air knocked out of him, while Eggsy goes to the bathroom to clean up. He comes back to drag Harry off as well, cleans his cock with a silent, effortless intimacy that makes Harry squirm and suck in his stomach under the crude bathroom lights.

“Makes me want to suck you clean,” Eggsy says afterwards, spooned behind Harry, “When I’ve made you come like that.” He nuzzles the nape of Harry’s neck, slides a foot between Harry’s ankles. “Want to get between your legs and taste you.”

This is how Harry finds himself walking out of the hospital on Fulham Road a few days later, with a clean bill of health but a stern talking about his alcohol intake by a nurse young enough to be his son. Eggsy hands him a sheet of paper from Step Forward with very little ceremony and whistles at Harry’s GGT levels when he gets a look at his results in return.

“Not you too,” Harry warns him, but he only has a splash of gin for pudding that evening, much to Eggsy’s amusement.

Later, in bed, Eggsy pushes greedy fingers under Harry’s pyjamas to toy at his ribs, his nipples; and kisses the tip of his nose before going down to his philtrum and finally to his mouth.

“Relieved?” he asks.

“Not really,” Harry answers, looking at Eggsy’s curious face, his patient eyes. “I have been going for testing every year for the past thirty years. I went every three months, the first few years.”

“After you popped your cherry?” Eggsy snorts jokingly.

“No,” Harry tells him, serious despite a dry smile. “I first had sex when I was in my last year of grammar school, a good six years before we started hearing about AIDS and before the Sun started going off about the Gay plague.”

“ _Oh_ ,” Eggsy says quietly, his hand stilling on Harry’s ribs. “So… That’s what, thirty-eight, thirty-nine years? Thirty-ish years of experience you’ve got on me?”

Harry hums and shifts closer to set his lips on Eggsy’s forehead, delighting in the way his eyelashes flutter of their own accord whenever and wherever Harry kisses him.

“Fourteen?” he asks after some quick maths, bringing a hand up to stroke around Eggsy’s jaw, his neck. Eggsy nods. “Rather young, some might say.”

Eggsy groans and laughs and shuffles closer to kiss the words away from Harry’s mouth.

“Shut up and show me all that bloody experience,” he whispers.

So Harry does.

He lays Eggsy down on his belly and sneaks a hand under him to feel his erection, trails his mouth down the length of his spine with a kiss for every knob his vertebrae make under his soft, pale skin, lets his lips veer off-course to taste beauty marks until he reaches the spread of Eggsy’s arse. With one hand, he pulls a cheek aside and leans down to kiss his hole, delighting at the sharp intake of breath Eggsy gives at being so exposed, the way he clenches and tilts his arse up into it. Harry pictures him doing the same around his prick, and moans into the warmth of the sensitive, vulnerable flesh there.

There’s something exquisite about knowing there are many things Eggsy has never done, or at least not with Harry, whether in bed or in the world; places he hasn’t been, streets he has never walked, art he has never seen. It makes Harry want to show him everything, take him everywhere and _take him everywhere_. He wants to kiss every unkissed part of Eggsy’s body and show him all these so-far unseen things.

“Oh shit fuck _hell_ I want you to fuck me so bad,” Eggsy babbles, head pillowed on his arms, rutting into Harry’s hand and pushing his arse up into Harry’s face. When Harry looks up, he finds him blushing a deep shade of crimson, brows furrowed and lips slick with saliva and parted open. Harry takes the way up his back the same way he came down, kissing and running his mouth up his skin while Eggsy figuratively runs his, mumbling incoherently, “Fucking _love_ when you get hard for me, Harry, and you feel so good when I fuck you, yeah?” Harry nods against his shoulderblade, sneaks his hand out from under Eggsy - ignores his whining, the ache in his own hip - and drapes himself over Eggsy’s back. “Now?” Eggsy asks tightly, turning his head to watch Harry.

“No,” he answers. “Don’t - don’t move.”

Obediently, Eggsy doesn’t - breathes heavily while Harry rummages one-handed in the nightstand drawer for the bottle of lube before moving away, spreading Eggsy’s legs wider with a knock of his knees. He smears some lube on Eggsy’s arse, between his cheeks, strokes over his hole gently and feels his mouth flood with saliva when he greedily prods at his hole with the pad of his thumb.

Harry throws the bottle aside, feels it roll off the bed and thunk to the floor, and resumes his position, draped over Eggsy’s back, snug between his spread legs, to fit his cock between his cheeks and thrust gently.

“There,” he tells him, breathless. “There.”

Eggsy whines in answer - they’ve done this before, mutually teasing, without any sort of lubrication. Now, like this, everything slides smoothly, the head of Harry’s cock catching on Eggsy’s hole every so often. He feels gorgeous - ridiculously warm and obscenely tight, his arse pillowing Harry’s prick in the most delicious way. He keeps gasping, tilting his arse into Harry’s hips as he grinds into the mattress, swearing under his breath; so responsive that Harry comes embarrassingly fast. His heart thuds in his chest as he unplasters himself from Eggsy, skipping a beat when Eggsy greedily turns over to reveal his cock, desperately hard and sticky with precome, glistening on the glans.

The only thing that seems to make sense to Harry is to lick it off, to fit Eggsy’s prick in his mouth and to let him feed it between his lips with clumsy jerks of his hips and the trembling push of his hands in Harry’s hair. It gives Harry the most stupidly juvenile thrill, to realise he will get a mouthful of Eggsy’s come very soon, and he slips a hand between Eggsy’s arsecheeks to feel his own semen drying tackily there, stroking over Eggsy’s hole with two fingers and pressing teasingly against his perineum until he comes, groans sticking to the back of his throat, fingers too tight in Harry’s hair, his whole body tensed up. He spills in Harry mouth, salty and too-bitter. His come tastes like spunk, like a smoker’s spunk; there’s no mystery about it, ever. Harry doesn’t know why it feels so good, to swallow him down like this, not just the dirty sort of good but the sort that makes him grab Eggsy’s hand on the street and wipe jam off his cheek in the morning.

Of course he knows, really, he thinks later, after showering with Eggsy half-asleep in his arms. He’s fifty-six. _Thirty-nine years of experience_ , indeed. Harry has been in lust before, and he’s been in love, as well. It’s not a bad thing to realise. _It feels quite logical, really,_ he reasons once he’s gathered Eggsy in his arms and the lad is fast asleep. He’s got a hand curled up on Harry’s chest, the ring ever-present on his index finger. Harry foolishly thinks about that signet ring changing fingers, two fingers to the left.

_When the painting’s done, you old fool_ , he tells himself, and he brushes a kiss to the top of Eggsy’s head before falling asleep.


	23. Chapter 23

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Nothing but _[Mercure](https://67.media.tumblr.com/7291073253375951a8967599e12a7664/tumblr_oe33w6PRnf1vvdm7qo1_1280.jpg)_ by Pierre et Gilles. One of my favourite pieces of art, I've wanted to use it since the beginning.
> 
> On a more personal note, my work schedule has changed, which will affect posting time as it has this week. I will post every weekend - sometime between Friday night and Sunday night - at least until I can get it changed to something more reasonable. Sorry about being late, and as usual, thank you for reading and commenting!
> 
> On [Tumblr](http://sircolinfilth.tumblr.com) and [Twitter](https://twitter.com/callmealois).

March turns into April and the sky with it turns gradually from greyish white to a pale blue, a white canvas glazed over day after day by the ghosts of all the finest impressionists and the paintbrushes not even Death could pry from their cold hands. They start leaving the windows open, and in the evenings the clanking of cutlery is accompanied by the sounds of life in the Mews, sometimes the laughter of people having a pint at the nearby pub. Everything else disappears when Eggsy speaks, though, his voice a blanket for Harry to curl up in during the last chilly nights of the season.

With the heat off during the day the house gets cooler at night, and Harry gladly accepts Eggsy’s body in his arms, through frigid toes pressed against his ankles and cold fingers cupping his hip under his pyjamas. If they fuck before bed, Eggsy gets _too_ hot, and kicks off the duvet to pile up on Harry; then wakes him a few hours later when he sleepily yanks it off Harry to burrito himself under the warm duvet.

Harry should probably take it as a sign of how gone he is for him when he finds it _endearing_ instead of infuriating.

There’s also the fact that his first thought when he kisses Eggsy when he finds him still laying by his side in bed, awake and fiddling around on his phone, is _I could kiss him forever_ and not _Go brush your teeth, young man_. Or the fact that he doesn’t mind the stickiness the messy bottle of honey leaves in his cupboard, or the biscuit crumbs on the sofa.

Or the fact that he finds himself on Oxford Street the first Sunday of April, and that he was the one who _offered_ in the first place _._

“You didn’t have to come,” Eggsy tells him as he rifles through a table of cheap tee-shirts.

“It’s not a problem,” Harry says, cursing under his breath when a pair of loud tourists roll their trolley over his foot. “Though I’d rather you pick something of a higher standard.”

Eggsy throws him a bemused glance before he drapes two tee-shirts over his arm.

“I picked you,” he says breezily. “Should tell you enough about my standards.”

Harry kisses him, in the middle of Primark, with an armful of cheap polyester between them and half the world’s population milling all around. Eggsy laughs against his lips, folds himself and his armful of shirts inside Harry’s embrace.

“I’m picky about what’s at my feet, more like,” Eggsy murmurs against Harry’s cheek. Out the corner of his eye Harry can see Eggsy’s eyes, shining with mirth. A woman with two gangly teenagers in tow tuts at them, her hand on the pile of tee-shirts behind Eggsy, and he pushes Harry away with a strangled laugh.

The only reason he lets Eggsy pay for his purchases is because the total is under twenty pounds, and because he figures it might be easier to convince Eggsy to let him pay for something if he’s let him spend some money of his own. He manages to steer Eggsy towards Topman next, and remembers the size he had picked when Eggsy stares longingly at a summer jacket, turning the label over and over again like he could make the price change with the sheer power of his will. Harry picks it up and marches towards the check-out, intent on ignoring Eggsy’s rather colourful sputtering.

“Did you want anything else?” he asks him, blinking innocently, and smiles brightly to the perky young man manning the register when Eggsy shakes his head and blushes up to his ears.

“You can’t do this,” Eggsy mutters when they walk out.

“Where to next?” Harry asks. Eggsy shakes his head, frowning.

“I ain’t charity.”

“Eggsy,” Harry tells him, pulling him away from the crowds of shoppers and tourists, next to a small kiosk selling some violently garish London garb. “You are an exquisitely handsome young man. You deserve the finer things. I enjoy giving you those things.” When Eggsy looks down, still blushing, Harry leans closer to blink Bambishly at him and ask, “You wouldn’t dare deprive me of that now, would you.”

“Fuck off,” Eggsy mumbles, but there’s a smile tugging the frown away from his face.

Apparently, Eggsy’s idea of _finer things_ is the Adidas flagship store, where he explains to Harry he has dozens of pairs of trainers, back at his mum’s flat. He doesn’t say _my parents’ flat_.

He doesn’t say _home_.

As they walk through the rows of colourful, pristine shoes, leather and thread glistening under the bright lights like freshly waxed apples in a greengrocer’s display, Eggsy strokes the smooth surface of the trainers, the matte soles, the silky shoelaces. He trails feather-gentle fingers on the shiny fabric of trackies and the factory-clean cotton of tee-shirts, the brim of a cap, the soft lining of a cosy hoodie. In Harry’s opinion, everything is horribly garish, unworthy of Eggsy’s quiet reverence. He trails behind Eggsy silently, curses the loud music in his head and the crowds of careless shoppers who bump into him or yell over racks or tables, where they unfold tee-shirts only to throw them back on the display a second later in a balled-up mess.

“My hero,” Eggsy mumbles, slowing down to a halt in front of a display, where a graphic sign sleekly advertises _Jeremy Scott_. Harry is familiar with the work of Alexander Scott, a little less with Thomas Scott’s; he has met Jeremy Gardiner once, last Summer, at the opening of an exhibition at the V &A. The first and last names don’t exist together in his memory; but when he asks Eggsy who exactly the man is, he gets a blank stare in reply. “He’s a designer,” Eggsy says slowly.

“Ah,” is all Harry can answer.

Eggsy shakes his head and goes back to examining a pair of trainers. Harry looks over the display absently, vaguely trying to recall if the artist is named _Gardiner_ or _Gardner_ when his eyes fall on a bright white pair of trainers with large wings sprouting above the heel. He can picture them wrapping around Eggsy, making him into Hermes the messenger, the one who travels with flight-fast feet between the Gods and the mortals, walking amongst the former to act as Zeus’ postman and amongst the latter as a true God, inspiring heroism and bravery into them.

“What is your shoe size?” he asks Eggsy, aiming for casual and failing even to his own ears. Eggsy narrows his eyes at him and tips his chin up almost imperceptibly, surely so to anyone who hasn’t been watching Eggsy constantly from every possible angle.

“Nine,” Eggsy says, shifting closer and looking at Harry through eyes narrowed to slits, under a fringe of dark eyelashes. He says it like a challenge, like a dare, with a sort of avid curiosity and something like longing.

So Harry smiles politely and marches them to the checkouts with the box tucked under his arm, watching out the corner of his eye Eggsy’s studiously impassive face, betrayed by the dark blush staining the tips of his ears and the tightness of his lips as he bites down whatever wants to break out - a smile or a frown.

Later at home he sits on the bed in the guest room as Eggsy puts away his clothes in the small closet, watches him pile everything meticulously, cutting tags off with his teeth and collecting them in a tight fist. The closet built into the wall has plenty of shelves, some of which are occupied by boxes of Harry’s and spare guest linen, but a good half are empty - still Eggsy has only commandeered two shelves, the pile of trousers encroaching on the one of shirts. Harry watches him stuff new pairs of socks into a shopping bag sitting at the bottom of the closet, and tilts his head curiously to the side.

“You seem to be on your way out,” he remarks. Eggsy finishes folding a tee-shirt over his chest and puts it away before shrugging.

“Didn’t want to take too much room, me,” he says. He picks up another pair of socks, balls it up, and tosses them in the shopping bag-cum-garment chest.

“You may take as much room as you like,” Harry tells him gently, getting up to cross the small room and fold his arms around Eggsy.

He hums under his breath before turning into Harry’s embrace, giving him a small smile when Harry’s arms go tighter around him. He presses a kiss to Harry’s lips and doesn’t close his eyes. Harry spreads the flat of his hands over Eggsy’s back, bunching up the soft cotton of his polo shirt under his palms, tilts his head to the side to kiss Eggsy better, deeper, pushing him closer still.

“Thank you,” Eggsy whispers against his lips, the quiet motion of them butterfly-like, a barely-there tickle of words spoken almost into Harry’s mouth.

“Thank _you_ ,” Harry answers, and Eggsy’s eyes flutter shut when he leans in for another kiss.

The painting is coming along well, according to Harry’s opinion and the emails he gets back from the Penguin Classics committee - they leave for the studio right after breakfast and don’t come home until late, sometimes phoning for takeaway or stopping for dinner on the way home; but most of the time Eggsy cooks. On the day Harry leaves for a dreaded double feature - lunch meeting with Chester King followed by an early afternoon one with Agatha Sullivan - Eggsy sends him off with a long, lingering kiss in the hallway and promises to cook him dinner. He ends up having to push Harry out the door to shut it in his face, but runs out seconds later to press one last kiss to Harry’s lips, uncaring of the light rain currently drizzling down on the Mews, soaking his socks on the wet pavement.

Hyde Park looks incredibly green under the quiet April shower misting the cab’s windows, the roads made into mirrors soaked as they are by the fine but relentless rain. Harry has done this drive hundreds of times, and he hardly notices the residential buildings of Mayfair anymore, but this time he doesn’t think of anything but Eggsy, as he has been continuously for the past six months. He remembers going for a meeting with Chester on Savile Row, the day after he and Eggsy had quite literally ran into each other at the Gloucester Road station. Even then Chester seemed drab and snobby, but there’s something else now - something that makes him seem downright _mean_. Harry wonders if it has always been there.

On his way up to the gallery, he knocks quickly on the glass pane of the door to the tailors’ shop, raises a greeting hand to Percival when he turns his head towards it, smiling drily when the man nods at him. The smile has disappeared by the time he enters the gallery.

Chester’s secretary shows him to his office with a large pink-lacquered grin. Despite the variety of excellent restaurants lining Heddon Street, just five minutes from the gallery, Chester gets - as he always has - an old-fashioned chef to deliver old-fashioned meals to eat in old-fashioned silverware. A small table has been set in a corner of his office, and Chester doesn’t raise from his seat to shake Harry’s hand. There’s a decanter of red wine, ham and pea soup, undercooked rolls wrapped in cloth, and Chester’s horribly distasteful sipping sounds whenever he brings the spoon to his lips.

He seems to time his questions, asks them as soon as Harry is taking a bite of bread or a drink of wine, and tuts under his breath when it takes Harry more than a few seconds to answer.

“I still don’t quite understand what possessed you to paint something new,” Chester begins as Harry is chewing on a piece of bread. “Well, one might be able to hazard a guess, of course.”

“Exactly that, Chester,” Harry answers cooly. “I wanted to paint something new. It’s quite simple, really.”

“Harry,” Chester starts just as a young man slips inside the office to grab their empty plates. He steps forward hesitantly and Harry murmurs his thanks, staring at the imprints the hot crockery has left on the tablecloth. “You and I have been doing this a long time. You have a reputation that you have worked hard on. I _made_ that reputation. I simply don’t understand why you would throw it all to the wind for a passing fancy.”

“This is not-”

“Oh, of course it’s not a _passing fancy_ ,” Chester says, politely derisive, blinking age-pale blue eyes at him. “I know you, Harry.”

“People change,” Harry counters, which sounds marginally less petulant than _No, you don’t_.

“Not at our age they don’t,” Chester tells him. 

Harry does not point out that Chester is twenty years older than him, refuses his offer of a cigar and a glass of brandy for pudding, and trudges down the stairs. This time he catches sight of Spencer in the tailors’ shop, and gives him the same knock and greeting he’d given Percival. Spencer takes a step towards the door, but Harry shakes his head and bustles outside. It’s still drizzling, and despite finding himself dreadfully early Harry hurries towards Cork Street anyway.

Under the burgundy awning of Morris’s, a lone pair of young women sit, surrounded by empty tables, drinking coffee and smoking. Harry hesitates for a second before crossing the road to quietly ask for a spare, smiling gratefully when one produces a Marlboro and raises a perfectly manicured eyebrow derisively when Harry asks for a lighter, too. He thanks them both profusely and breathes in the smoke deeply. The cigarette reminds him of Eggsy and he checks his phone, walking slower Clifford Street. There’s a message from fifteen minutes ago, _Hope its all going well_ , then another not a minute later, a picture of Eggsy laying on the sofa with _Dracula_ upside-down on his lap. _Wish you was here,_ the message reads.

_I would gladly take vampires over King and Sullivan_ , Harry writes him. _I do rather wish I were with you, too._

_Ill bite yr neck tonight, promise_ , Eggsy answers a few seconds later.

Harry hides his smile behind the pull of his lips around the filter of the cigarette. He has been idly walking for the past few minutes, and he looks up to find himself in the middle of New Bond Street, surrounded by luxury couture shops. He sighs and goes to turn back when a shop’s name catches his eye, at the end of the street, discreet in comparison to Burberry’s Union Jack flags quietly shivering under the light rain across the street. Harry looks at his watch. He has plenty of time.

When he hurries inside Agatha’s office, she spares a glance at the bright orange bag Harry sets at his feet when he sits down, but says nothing. The Venice watercolours are still in the same spot. Harry has come to expect what comes - Agatha pursing her lips apologetically to tell him she has no worthy offers or requests to pass along, then tapping on her tablet to pull up Harry’s latest email and sigh at it silently.

“You have a reputation, Harry,” she says, almost pleadingly. “You have worked hard on it.”

“I have,” Harry answers, “And to be very frank with you, apparently that reputation means no one wants any of my work anymore. The times are changing - what is so wrong about changing with them?”

Agatha shakes her head and looks down at her tablet. Harry studies at the watercolours. The sun has already begun wearing down the colours, he notices. Even without knowing what the original looked like, it’s glaringly obvious when he stares at it. It must have been gradual, he thinks, the blue of the canal growing pale with age. He thinks of Chester’s eyes.

“Harry, I know you,” Agatha tells him. A lock of hair has escaped her tight bun and keeps falling into her eyes. “I have known you for a long time.”

“That might be the issue,” Harry answers drily.

Agatha seems to drop the issue for the day and raises to shake his hand. As soon as her fingers leave Harry’s, he is on his way out the door and into a cab.

“That was a complete waste of time,” Harry laments when he gets home that afternoon. It’s barely four, and Eggsy makes them tea while Harry rubs at his eyes on the sofa. “Exhausting for absolutely no reason. I am paying this woman to tell me nobody worthy of my apparently incredibly precious time wants my work.”

“Sounds fun,” Eggsy calls from the kitchen. “People are fucking idiots if they don’t want your shit.”

“Thank you,” Harry tells him softly when Eggsy comes back with two cups of tea and hands one to him. “I have something for you,” he adds, leaning down to grab the bag he’d set down next to the sofa. “Not a word,” he warns when Eggsy opens his mouth.

Blush is already spreading up the back of Eggsy’s neck to his ears when he rifles through the branded tissue paper. He pulls out the scarf with very little ceremony, the cashmere and silk blend whispering like a quiet stream of water out the bag and into his hands; unfolds it curiously, mouth half-open, looking stunned. The scarf pools on his lap, a puddle of pale gold and black, snakes coiled lazily away from Hermes’ caduceus, the staffs crossing the square of delicate fabric. The escaped snakes are imprisoned in jewelry, cuffs and buckles that could belong on couture clothing or on an cherished submissive in some ambitious softcore film.

“ _Thank you_ ain’t _a_ word, it’s two,” Eggsy says finally, his voice coming out small and strangled. His hands keep moving restlessly over the soft fabric.

“You are most welcome,” Harry tells him, folding the scarf over itself in a large triangle and winding it around Eggsy’s neck. “I assume this could be worn as an ascot, were it made entirely of silk, but it might be a little old-fashioned for you.”

“I can like old-fashioned,” Eggsy murmurs, very pleased eyes at half mast when he leans in to press his smile to Harry’s. “Thank you, Harry.”

“Thank _you_ ,” Harry answers. “This is Hermes’ staff, to match your trainers,” he explains, stroking a careful finger over the cashmere, over Eggsy’s neck. “It was given to him by Apollo, if I recall correctly. What do you know of Hermes?”

“The messenger, yeah?” Eggsy asks. “That’s pretty much it.”

Eggsy has thrown a leg over Harry’s, one of his hands on his thigh and the other at his own neck, fingering the soft fabric of the scarf. Harry lays a hand next to his, strokes over the flat bezel of the signet ring.

“God of thieves,” Harry begins, smiling when Eggsy snorts. “A trickster.” Eggsy mutters something rude under his breath and hides his face into Harry’s neck. “Quickly and swiftly moving between worlds to help wanderers cross borders, to bring transition and change where needed.”

Eggsy bites his neck, then, a sharp, electric little thing; and Harry shuts his mouth to run it on Eggsy’s jaw instead, and worship him as he deserves.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [The scarf](https://67.media.tumblr.com/1d3af789ac2163f94f3c907301d5ed6f/tumblr_oe343e1eYY1vvdm7qo1_1280.jpg). From Hermes.


	24. Chapter 24

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wildberry vodka and Coke, a [_Sketch for Hell_](https://66.media.tumblr.com/6a821049c1637aba20c589190c757fdb/tumblr_oesx8zxaKX1vvdm7qo1_1280.jpg) by John Singer Sargent (undated but estimated ~1903-1916) and [_Dorian Grey_](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gyrMN6Hvq4g) by Today Kid featuring Anna Nalick.
> 
> I posted a note on [Tumblr](http://sircolinfilth.tumblr.com) after a poll on [Twitter](https://twitter.com/callmealois) regarding my not posting last week. Apologies again! I needed a break. But we're back. Thank you as always for reading and enjoying this story. :)

April draws to a close and May begins on a Monday.

Harry spends the day fidgeting over the painting as he as for the past week, adding a lick of light here and there or deepening shadows, going over the white of Eggsy’s eyes and the blue-ish tint thrown by his cellphone on the tip of his nose or the blade of a cheekbone. Sometime around six he finds himself sitting in front of the easel for long minutes, his fingers twitching on the array of paintbrushes scattered in front of him without grabbing any. Eggsy stands unmoving behind him, a hair away from holding his breath. He mutters something under his breath when Harry grabs a paintbrush, then makes a choked sound in the back of his throat when Harry uses the end of the handle to sign the bottom of the canvas, _Harry Hart_ scratched in the meat of the paint.

“What’s it called?” Eggsy asks in a low voice when Harry leans back and folds his hands together. Eggsy sets a hand on his shoulder and Harry tilts his head to lean his cheek against it, turns to kiss the signet ring on Eggsy’s index finger.

“ _The Black Prince_ ,” Harry says. Eggsy snorts.

“Thank fuck I didn’t take you to Dirty Dicks on Bishopsgate,” he mutters.

All in all, the painting is completed with little ceremony - Harry gives it Dorian’s spot in the hallway closet and sets it to dry, putting Dorian back on the easel to be varnished soon. It’s strange, finishing it and leaving it in the dark, but not as difficult when he gets to return to Eggsy to press a kiss to his lips.

“Don’t get paint on my scarf, me boyfriend bought it for me,” Eggsy murmurs, but he kisses Harry back anyway.

There’s dinner at Chez Patrick afterwards, where Harry manages to cajole Eggsy into trying escargot with promises of never even _trying_ when they go to Paris in a few weeks, which is probably what convinces Eggsy to have one, eaten agonisingly slowly with a napkin hiding half of his scrunched-up face. He eats half of Harry’s saint-jacques between bites of his confit de canard and delights childishly at seeing the waiter set his crêpes flambées alight, though; the Saint-Emilion with the main course and the champagne with pudding bring a light blush to his cheeks and a dark laziness to his eyes.

“A bit woozy there, aren’t we?” Harry teases when they walk out. The day has been warm, the pavement is radiating heat, a light breeze brings the scent of flowers up from the hopeful gardens kept by those living in the basement flats lining Marloes Road. The streets are quiet, and Harry lets Eggsy pull him away from foot traffic, climbing one of the brick stairs in front of the brightly-lit Marriott on Cromwell Road. Like this, Harry has to tilt his head up to kiss him, and Eggsy answers eagerly, tasting like cognac and sugar and champagne.

“M’always a bit woozy around you,” Eggsy kisses into Harry’s temple, like it’s a secret too shameful for even Harry’s ears and he would whisper it directly into Harry’s brain if he could.

“All the same, my dear boy,” Harry murmurs back, nosing under the exquisitely soft scarf to find the three little moles under Eggsy’s ear and press his lips to them. Eggsy sways against him, his arms tight around Harry’s waist, his breath damp against Harry’s skin. “I love you,” he whispers with his lips set to Eggsy’s earlobe, the _you_ turning easily into a gentle kiss there, too.

“Yeah?” Eggsy breathes. He tilts his head up, looks down at Harry through the shadows his eyelashes throw under their batting and bites down on the smile pulling at his lips.

“Of course,” Harry tells him. “Eggsy. My darling, dear Eggsy. You have no idea.”

“Then tell me.”

Harry answers with a kiss and pulls Eggsy down the step and back on the kerb to start back on the walk home, holding his hand all the while. There are a few more stops for lazy snogging, and when they get home Eggsy’s blush has darkened with more than just a few glasses of wine and champagne. Harry undresses him slowly, unwinds the scarf from his neck to dress it up in kisses instead, touches every knob on Eggsy’s back with his fingers over then under the leather of his jacket, then palms at his chest with his hands slipped under the soft cotton of his tee-shirt to feel his even softer skin. He leads them upstairs when Eggsy starts moving against his thigh with more purpose, gathers him up upstairs with his fly undone and looking dazed and well-kissed.

“You are my finest work of art,” Harry murmurs, “Bloody hell, _the_ finest work, at all. The way you blush is sinful, you look like something out of a rococo painting, and to be the one to paint that blush there, my dear Eggsy…”

“Oh fucking _hell_ ,” Eggsy mutters, crimson and shaking under Harry’s body where he has pushed Eggsy down on the bed, leaking already when Harry pushes a hand down his trousers to wrap his fingers around his cock. “Keep, keep talking…”

So Harry does, lets his mouth run before running it over Eggsy’s body instead, sucking a nipple into his mouth hastily before he takes Eggsy’s prick into his mouth. His own is laying low, content to stay lazy and soft; but Eggsy comes enough for the both of them, first into Harry’s mouth then into his arse when Harry ignores the ache in his thighs and rides him, bent low to tell Eggsy in equally low tones how gorgeous he and his eyes and his cock and his feet and his chest and his thighs are.

“All of you, really,” he adds later, when they’ve cleaned up and Eggsy is curled up against him, stroking the skin of Harry’s thigh slowly. “I cannot believe how gorgeous you look.”

“Keep talking,” Eggsy mumbles sleepily against his shoulder, like a languorous cat asking for more affection.

“There should be a red cordon around you,” Harry murmurs. “But I don’t believe anything could keep my hands off of you.”

And so nothing does.

Over the next few weeks, Harry varnishes Dorian and lavishes Eggsy with kisses, takes him, his camera and a sketchbook to all the museums and then to parks when May ends and the summer is close to truly beginning. They weave through crowds of impatient schoolchildren eager to discard their uniforms when they visit the National Portrait Gallery and sidestep sunbathing businessmen with their suits askew in Kensington Gardens. Harry keeps Eggsy close to him, figuratively and literally, wakes with Eggsy sitting next to him and spends his days with Eggsy’s hand in his or the thought of him always on his mind.

The last Tuesday of May, a photographer from Penguin Classics comes to the studio to take official pictures of the portraits to send them to the committee. 

“That’s bloody fantastic,” he says when Harry shows him to his _Black Prince_. “Are those yours?” he asks, pointing at the mosaic of Polaroids covering one of the walls and spilling over on the next.

“This young man’s, actually,” Harry tells him, turning towards Eggsy who is observing quietly, leaning against a wall. He smiles at Harry and winks at the photographer.

“ _Oh_ ,” the man says. “The black prince himself, I’ll be damned. You only do film?” When Eggsy nods, he adds, “My name’s Tristan. Come over here a bit if you like, I’ll show you my gear, it’s all digital.”

“Yeah, alright,” Eggsy answers, curiously stepping closer.

It’s fitting, Eggsy clumsily handling Tristan’s camera to take a picture of himself, a rather pleasing mise en abyme that reminds Harry of Narcissus. It also puts the idea of Eggsy studying photography in his head again, but he remains quiet on the subject, thinking of how Eggsy reacted the last time he mentioned it. After fifteen minutes of a crash course in digital photography, Eggsy steps back to observe the photographer as he fiddles with Harry’s lights to make them shine down on the painting and capture the best shot

“Pretty fucking nice,” he mutters, nodding towards the photographer. “The camera, Harry,” he adds when he turns his head and finds Harry staring at him with a fond look on his face.

“Would you like one?” Harry asks him.

“Nah,” Eggsy answers, scrunching up his nose. “S’harder to fake stuff with film, yeah? No Photoshop or anything. What you see’s what you get.”

What the committee sees is apparently to their liking, given the phonecall Harry gets in place of an email soon after Tristan sends the photographs, sneakily adding Harry in BCC. The very pleased conversation with the head of the committee is followed by one with Elenore, breathless and full of praise after Harry had forwarded the email containing the portraits to her.

“Your work has always reminded me of going to the Tate with my grandfather, when I was little,” she says quietly. “Bless him, he didn’t speak much English, but he read the descriptions to me and sat in front of paintings for the longest time just staring… But this portrait, Mr Hart, it’s like watching my little brother. He’ll be young forever, for me.”

Harry doesn’t even realise Agatha’s quietness in answer to his forwarding of the photographs. There’s a juvenile thrill to realising his work his appreciated, the praise making happiness bubble like champagne in his chest. He’s _proud_ , he realises.

“Thank you,” he whispers into Eggsy’s neck one night, when he thinks Eggsy has fallen asleep. “I love you.”

Eggsy doesn’t say anything, but he turns his head and smiles faintly, and Harry watches him for a long time in the low light before he falls asleep.

Summer comes a few weeks later, the temperature slowly climbing and leaving Eggsy’s arms bare during the day. Harry leaves his jacket at home and rolls up his shirtsleeves, and sometimes when they walk side by side Eggsy curls a hand around his wrist to tickle the soft inside of it with playful fingers. _This_ is summer: a lovely young man by his side and the air smelling sweet and light, tourists and Londoners lazing about in parks and girls trading their school uniforms for flowy dresses to match the boys’ shorts. Sometime near the end of June, after weeks of drafting up a blurb about the paintings and putting together a mock-up of the book with the good people at Penguin Classics, Harry takes Eggsy to the Hunterian Museum to tell him in front of skeletons about his father’s life as a fellow of The Royal College of Surgeons and the delight he took in correcting whomever addressed him using _Dr Herbert Hart._

Outside, they walk slowly through the greenery of Lincoln’s Inn Fields, the sunlight almost blinding after the muted, cold lights of the museum.

“Ain’t that your solicitor?” Eggsy asks, tapping Harry’s wrist and nodding towards a man walking opposite them with a boy Eggsy’s age by his side, because _of course_.

“Harry,” Merlin tells him when he catches sight of them, blinking at Eggsy and at their linked hands.

“Merlin,” Harry nods in answer before turning the young man. “Niall. Pleasure to see you, it has been too long, truly,” he tells him, shaking his hand and smiling earnestly. “Visiting your old father at work?”

“Yeah, dad and I just went to lunch, I’m working for this company on Chancery Lane,” Niall answers, smiling his mother’s smile but letting it reach to his father’s dark eyes, hidden as they are behind his stylish tortoiseshell frames. He looks older than Eggsy, in his light grey suit and his braces with his jacket thrown over his elbow and his red hair combed into a carefully styled mess to hide his already-receding hairline. His eyes linger on Eggsy, then on Harry, one of his eyebrows curved like a questionmark.

“Where are my manners - Eggsy, this is Niall, Merlin’s youngest son. Niall, this is Eggsy, my boyfriend.”

“You lads are just a few months apart,” Merlin adds while the two young men shake hands. He says it brightly, like it’s an amusing coincidence; Harry throws him a dark glare. Merlin blinks innocently at him.

“Still in the accounting business, Niall?” Harry asks.

“Still a-counting, yeah,” he says, and they all politely laugh the laugh of people who have no desire to spend one more minute chit-chatting. “I ought to get back soon, really, but it was lovely meeting you, Eggsy.”

As soon as they have said their goodbyes, Harry takes Eggsy’s hand back in his to lead him away and out the gardens. The rest of the day is pleasant, and the next morning Eggsy gives him a long, lingering kiss goodbye before he goes up to South Hampstead for the day. When Eggsy calls from downstairs to warn him there’s a message on the ansaphone, Harry expects to find Merlin, but Chester’s voice rings in the foyer instead.

_Harry,_ he begins as usual. _This is Chester King_. _Well_ , he says wearily after a heavy pause, _I suspect you know the reason I am calling you. Perhaps you should reconsider and withdraw that second painting, shouldn’t you? The first one will do nicely. You are perfectly aware of my feelings on the subject - we have made ourselves very clear, after all. I’ll expect to hear from you soon._

_Deleted_ , the mechanical voice informs Harry when he presses the button.

Morning passes quietly. After lunch, Harry pours himself two fingers of port and sits on the sofa, next to the end table the sketchbook is still resting on. He considers it for a few seconds before pulling his cellphone out to ring Merlin.

“Harry?”

“Your approval or lack thereof regarding my personal life is not needed,” Harry tells him. There’s a rustling, the sound of a lighter, Merlin’s exhale, loud and staticy over the phone.

“I apologise. This is the sort of conversation I need a cigarette for,” Merlin says.

“Does it amuse you? Do you disapprove? I cannot tell, really.”

“Thought you didn’t care,” Merlin says. Harry can picture him, leaning back against the backrest of a bench in the Inn, pushing gravel with the tip of his oxford. “A bit of both, Harry. And you’ll tell me he’s not your midlife crisis, but there are no coincidences in life.”

“I’ll be fine,” Harry says.

Harry takes a sip of port, considers his next words, but before he can open his mouth, Merlin answers:

“Will he?” When Harry doesn’t reply, he continues. “If Niall brought back home someone my age, _our_ age - Harry, I’m not worried about you.”

“He’s not your son,” Harry tells him slowly. “He’s an adult. Merlin, he makes me happy. He makes me enjoy my craft again. I am happy with him.”

“Just make sure he is happy, as well,” Merlin says warily. Harry breathes through his nose, sips at his port again.

“For as long as I can.”

“Yes,” Merlin tells him. “Exactly.”

The conversation is still ringing in Harry’s ears that evening when Eggsy comes home to find him browsing through train tickets and looking through upcoming exhibitions at Georges Pompidou or the Louvre that might be of interest. Eggsy doesn’t tell him anything about his day, but his skin is stained with nothing more than marker ink and he smells faintly of beer, so Harry gathers it might have gone as well as it possibly can.

June turns into July, the heat turns London into an unbearable oven, and they leave for Paris. The weather is not much better over there, where the streets are more cramped than in London. Their cab driver from the Gare du Nord to Harry’s small flat in the Marais speaks an English so thickly accented every _th_ turns into an _s_ , and he has trouble understanding that Harry is a painter but not a _house_ painter, but he screeches to a halt near the end of the Rue Sainte-Croix de la Bretonnerie without having driven anyone over, which is all one can ask of a taxi driver in Paris.

On their first night there, Harry takes him to a good old-fashioned tour of the neighbourhood to show him which fancy shop used to be a bookstore or a café; he explains his parents took him and his brother to Paris a few times growing up, about sneaking away to go in equal measures haunt museums and gay bars.

Then on the first morning Harry manages to sneak away to the nearest boulangerie to buy still-warm viennoiseries that smell absolutely scrumptious, buttery and decadent; he picks up tea, milk, honey, a lemon and some freshly-squeezed orange juice at an outrageously expensive shop on the Rue du Temple and manages to return to Eggsy still dozing in bed, covered in nothing but the warm light streaming in through the window of the tiny bedroom. Harry wakes him up properly with a kiss and a cuppa, lets Eggsy strip him out of his clothes to join him back in bed for a feast of pains au chocolat, croissants, pains aux raisins and chouquettes. He licks sugar off Eggsy’s lips and teasingly brushes bottle-cold fingers on Eggsy’s nipples until they roll off into the crumbs for a proper snog.

Harry was right: Eggsy in the summer is absolutely gorgeous, glazed gold by the sun and the sheen of sweat only interrupted by the air conditioning in museums. They wander up to the Temple de la Sybille in the Buttes-Chaumont where Eggsy spends a half hour taking pictures of the city peeking out from above the Haussmanian buildings, then to Montmartre after Harry points out the Sacré-Coeur in the distance. The streets surrounding it stink of piss and weed but still Eggsy takes as many pictures of the cramped fabric shops as he does of the imposing basilica. As promised, Harry buys him a crepe from a street vendor; then a cone of soft-serve ice-cream when they both find out eating hot food in thirty degrees weather is a terrible idea.

But even with the relentless heat, at night they stumble into the sheets together, Eggsy burying his fingers in the sweat-drenched hair at the back of Harry’s head to guide it over his cock and Harry sucking Eggsy’s poor overworked toes in his mouth after a whole day of walking around. On the third night, Harry fingers Eggsy’s arse until he comes, sucking on the slick head of his cock to swallow his load, as Eggsy babbles _Fuck me, fucking hell, you gotta fuck me soon_.

“Soon,” Harry promises afterwards, running a hand up and down the sweaty length of Eggsy’s back, up from his hairline and down to the curve of his arse. The yellowish light of the streetlights is streaming in through the wide-open window, the noises of rambunctious men out and about until late night and early morning echoing up to Harry’s small flat. Eggsy hums in answer, looking and sounding awfully pleased. Harry strokes his hair, the curve of his ear. “Are you happy?” he asks finally, quieter than he means to.

Eggsy opens his eyes to stare at him, smiling but serious, skin painted bronze in the darkness but his body warm as anything under Harry’s fingers.

“Yeah,” he murmurs. “Pretty fucking happy.”


	25. Chapter 25

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wildberry vodka! Two pictures today! _[Untitled](https://67.media.tumblr.com/a91effc45d547436586fcd7f5f31ac8f/tumblr_of5znuPv8h1vvdm7qo1_1280.png)_ (2011-2013) by [Brian Oldham](http://brianoldham.format.com) and _[Provincetown 1936](https://66.media.tumblr.com/0ace96fd04bb6da8185b99a37b5ab12d/tumblr_of5znuPv8h1vvdm7qo2_1280.jpg)_ by an anonymous photographer.
> 
> Mostly porn, partially stars.
> 
> [Tumblr](http://sircolinfilth.tumblr.com) and [Twitter](https://twitter.com/callmealois)

There is probably something to be said about how dreadfully cliché it is to fuck your boyfriend for the first time in Paris, but Harry has always staunchly argued that clichés are clichés for a reason, and so mid-July he finds himself in the sweltering summer heat in the sheets with the most beautiful boy in the world, who is currently letting himself be covered in kisses and grinding a once-spent now-eager erection against Harry’s hip.

“Did you bring condoms?” he murmurs into Eggsy’s jaw, petting his bollocks, his arse. It feels like there’s something magnetic under Eggsy’s skin, pulling Harry’s hands to it to caress and stroke.

“Do we need ‘em?” Eggsy whines, blinking dark, hazy eyes at Harry.

“You won’t enjoy an arse full of semen,” Harry argues. “I’ll take care of this,” he adds, pulling away with one last kiss.

“Maybe I will if it’s yours,” Eggsy grins at him, lascivious on their mess of sheets, blushed pink with the heat in all senses of the word, his skin covered in red marks where Harry’s mouth bit and sucked. For a second, Harry hesitates, one leg in his trousers.

“Next time,” he promises, and he throws on a shirt before putting his shoes on.

Just a few days before his fifty-seventh birthday, Harry is fumbling with coins at the vending machine outside a pharmacy on Rue du Temple. A small group of men, probably on their way out from the Raidd, whistle and hoot at him joyously as they stumble past. Harry stuffs the condoms in his pocket and catches sight of his reflection on a nearby store window: he looks overly rumpled, his hair mussed up in every direction and his shirt buttoned askew, his half-hard cock tracing an obvious bulge under his wrinkled slacks. _Fifty-seven_ , he tells himself. Eggsy has left marks of his own, dark purplish bites in his neck and throat and long scratches down Harry’s back, hidden under his shirt but burning beneath the fabric. _Not so bad_.

“You were gone forever,” Eggsy tells him when Harry comes back. His erection has softened a little, but as soon as Harry sheds his clothes and joins him back in bed he kisses him and pushes his cock against Harry’s hip eagerly.

“My poor love,” Harry teases him, slipping his hands under Eggsy’s body to grab generous handfuls of his arse, pushing him closer. “Let me make it up to you.”

So he does.

He sucks on Eggsy’s cock for a bit, good and slow until he has Eggsy making fists in his hair and pushing his hips off the mattress to feed himself into Harry’s mouth. He debates making him come one more time, but he has seen Eggsy the last time Harry had fingered him to orgasm - twisting his hips away and swearing with oversensitivity - so Harry pulls away even as Eggsy curses and begs, and pushes his way down to mouth at his bollocks andthen tongue at his hole. Even with the shower he has taken earlier in the evening, Eggsy is sweaty already, and he tastes _delicious_. When Harry tells him, he pulls his hands up to cover his face.

“I love it,” Harry says hurriedly, mumbling against the tender skin of his thigh. “Your arse is the most exquisite thing, my darling, my dear Eggsy…” he trails off against Eggsy’s hole, licking and kissing, rubbing trembling fingertips over the saliva-slick flesh of it.

“Fuck me,” Eggsy mumbles, “ _Oh_ , fucking hell, Harry, babe, just do it, _please_...”

“Anything,” Harry tells him. He feels delirious with it all - the heat, the lovely spread Eggsy makes on the sheets, the breathlessness of his already-wrecked voice.

He gathers his knees under his arse even as they scream at him, spreads Eggsy’s thighs with a stroke up the downy skin of them, and fumbles to get the bottle of lube from the nightstand. Eggsy looks down, looking suddenly more sober, blinking through the haze.

“Are you sure?” Harry asks gently. When Eggsy nods, he adds, “If you do not enjoy it, tell me, Eggsy. I can suck you off, or anything you’d like.”

“Oh my _God_ , just fuck me, you freak,” Eggsy mumbles, pulling him close to mash their mouths together.

Harry settles next to him, a hair away from Eggsy’s lips, and brushes a kiss to the tip of his nose. This moment is always a little fussy - he uses too much lube, and it feels uncomfortably hot where their bodies are pressed together - but Eggsy’s eyelids keep fluttering, his mouth bitten red and painted glossy and plump by his tongue licking over his lips over and over again. Harry spends an unreasonable amount of time and lubricant opening Eggsy up, fitting one-two-three-four fingers inside his arse even though his cock isn’t nearly big enough to warrant that much preparation. All the while Eggsy breathes and whines, small sounds bubbling up and out his throat whenever Harry presses over his prostate or adds a finger. Eggsy’s cock is twitching, abandoned on his belly, sticky with precome.

“You are gorgeous,” Harry murmurs as he twists his fingers gently, stroking over the tender inside of Eggsy’s thigh with the pad of his thumb. “It feels as though you were made to fit under my hands, my darling.”

“Yeah,” Eggsy whispers quietly before he leans in to kiss Harry, a small press of lips interrupted by a moan when Harry goes to withdraw his fingers. “Fuck me, Harry.”

Harry’s fingers are soaked in lube and keep slipping over the foil of the wrapper, so Eggsy snatches it from him to tear it open before he hands it back. His eyes are dark under heavy lids as he watches Harry roll the johnny down the length of his cock.

“Alright,” Harry tells him when he positions himself. Eggsy’s hands come up to bury themselves in his hair and pull him down for a kiss. The latex-covered head of his prick slides over Eggsy’s well-lubed hole, and Eggsy gasps into his mouth, then again when Harry moves away to grab his cock and guide it inside. “Alright?” he repeats tightly. Eggsy is warm around him, and Harry can feel his pulse like this, fast but steady. When Eggsy nods, he relaxes. “You feel divine, Eggsy,” he murmurs. He pushes further in, groans when Eggsy clenches around him. “Are you alright?”

“Just keep kissing me,” Eggsy mumbles, blinking at him.

So Harry does keep kissing him, deep kisses minced by their breathing and by moans and groans alike. He pulls out slowly, drives back inside inch by inch, trying to figure out what Eggsy likes best. He feels half out his mind with how bloody _good_ it feels - it has been years since he last fucked another man, longer even since it was anyone he loved as much as he loves Eggsy. A bead of sweat trickles down his back and he shivers, biting gently at Eggsy’s bottom lip. He grinds into Eggsy’s arse, no rhythm, no finesse to it, swallows every sound he makes right from his lips and sets to making him spill some more of the lovely moans Harry has gotten used to hear from him.

When Harry clumsily reaches between their pressed bellies to take Eggsy’s cock in hand, he finds it less than half-hard, just a bit stiff under his fingers. Nonetheless he leans back on his knees to be able to reach better and starts wanking Eggsy, getting an almost-startled gasp in answer.

“It happens, the first few times,” Harry tells him softly. He quirks a smile to add, “Lord knows it happens to me quite often.” When Eggsy doesn’t say anything, he stills and repeats, “Are you alright?”

“Yeah,” Eggsy says tightly, blinking at him. “Feels weird, but nice enough, I guess?”

“ _Eggsy_ ,” Harry says.

He goes to pull out. It feels horrible, the thought that he has been fucking someone who isn’t fully enjoying it. Eggsy stops him with two legs going tight around Harry’s hips.

“I’m okay, yeah?” Eggsy tells him, eyes wide. “I want this. I want you. It’s just… I don’t like it as much as I thought I’d like it, you get me?”

“Yes,” Harry sighs. He pulls out but stays close, running a finger up the lovely blade of Eggsy’s jaw. He hesitates before adding, “A boyfriend convinced me to spank him, a long time ago, and we both hated it immediately but kept going for _minutes_ fearing the other would be cross if we stopped.”

“Had he been a bad, _bad_ boy?” Eggsy smirks, one of his legs dropping away to let Harry fall on his side next to him. “A girl smacked my arse once while I was fucking her,” he offers casually, rolling over to push Harry on his back and straddle him.

“What did you do?” Harry asks him, reaching out to stroke Eggsy’s sides.

“Nut,” Eggsy says bluntly, rubbing his arse teasingly over Harry’s cock. “Can we try like this?”

“ _Anything_.”

Eggsy gets him a new condom and throws the used one on the floor. Harry gives him a light smack on the side of his bum for his trouble and smiles when Eggsy raises an eyebrow at him before leaning down for a kiss.

“I could never hurt you,” Harry whispers against his lips. Eggsy pulls back to watch him for a second then plants a short kiss on his mouth.

“Yeah, alright,” he says, straightening up. Harry feels him reach behind himself for his cock, trying to guide it inside his hole. “Fuck, can you put it in my arse?” he asks.

“This has no right to be arousing,” Harry mumbles, but he complies anyway. Eggsy’s eyelids flutter and his mouth opens in a tight little _o._

“Oh, s’ _much_ better,” he says. Slowly, he starts working his hips up and down, cursing when Harry’s cock plops out, then again when Harry guides it back inside.

“Slow,” he murmurs. Eggsy obeys, fucking himself on Harry’s prick with short, patient jerks of his hips. Harry strokes up the length of his thighs, the flat plane of his belly, the pinkness of his nipples. Eggsy shakes under the slow passes of his hands, his abs contracting, his breath hitching. “Is that better?”

“ _Ah_ \- d’you wanna hear all about how good your prick feels in my arse?” Eggsy grins insolently, bends down carefully to kiss his mouth. Harry curves a hand over Eggsy’s hip, lets it whisper down to his hole to touch the place where his cock disappears inside it, the tightly-stretched skin, the stickiness of the lube.

With his other hand he takes hold of Eggsy’s cock, pumps it one, twice. It has fattened up again, hardening further under his fingers. He finds the glans wet with precome, and Eggsy pulls away when Harry thumbs at it, straightening up and groaning when the change drives Harry’s cock deeper inside him. He blinks arousal-blind eyes at Harry, trails fingertips down Harry’s sternum, rakes his short nails through the salt-and-pepper hair curling on Harry’s torso.

“You look sumptuous,” Harry chokes out, his hips twitching up to fuck Eggsy deeper, better. “A bloody Renaissance painting. Some Greek creature sculpted out of marble…” Eggsy stills atop him, and Harry grunts and pushes his hips up again. “I love you so much, Eggsy, I fucking _adore_ you, have you _seen_ yourself, you are _perfect_ …”

Eggsy’s cheeks are blushing red, and he slowly bends to collect a volley of kisses and words from Harry’s mouth. His cock slips out again, and they both fumble to push it back in. Harry’s hands grab at Eggsy’s arse, keep it in place as he ignores the pain in his lower back to feed his cock into Eggsy with quick jerks of his hips. There’s no more kissing to be made - they breathe into each other’s mouth, Harry’s tongue peeking out to lick a bead of sweat running down Eggsy’s jaw. His heart is beating madly against Harry’s chest, the air around them hot and humid, in the space that apparently still stubbornly keeps on existing around them despite the fact that all Harry can see and feel and hear and smell is _Eggsy_ , gorgeous and delirious, the tightness of his arse, the hardness of his cock against Harry’s belly before he takes himself back in hand and starts wanking off, fast and sloppy.

“You gonna come soon?” he asks Harry, clumsily grinding down on his cock. When Harry nods, Eggsy grins. “Fucking love when you come for me, Harry,” he adds, red and sweaty and wonderful. His grip falters on his cock when he reaches with the other hand to trace fingertips on Harry’s bottom lip. “Love your mouth and the shit you say sometimes.” Something passes over his face, and for a foolish second Harry expects _Love you_ to follow. He sucks Eggsy’s fingers into his mouth, lets his hips rest on the mattress for Eggsy to fuck himself on his prick as he pleases. Eggsy does, hums low in his throat and groans, picking up pace, thrusting into his fist. “Harry,” he says, “Harry. Look at me, yeah? Look at me.”

Harry obeys, half out his mind with it all, and lets Eggsy’s fingers slip out of his mouth when he finally comes, listening to Eggsy’s ragged breathing, grabbing his arse harder as he spills into the condom.

“I can’t,” he chokes out, “I can’t keep fucking you for very long, darling, Eggsy, I apologise-”

Eggsy shuts him up in the best way, crawling up his body until his knees are bracketing Harry’s face. He feeds his cock into Harry’s mouth and comes almost immediately, his fingers buried in Harry’s hair and his hole contracting around nothing. One of Harry’s hands is still grabbing one cheek, but with the other he brushes fingertips against Eggsy’s hole, feels for the sloppy, wet openness of it.

“Shit fuck hell,” Eggsy groans, shaking atop Harry, his thighs trembling. He rolls off and sprawls on his back next to him, wincing at the sweat-soaked sheets.

“Indeed,” Harry says, out of breath, and he rolls on his side to kiss Eggsy’s damp skin. “Indeed.”

The next day Harry’s hips and thigh and back ache something fierce, so they spend a couple hours in the Louvre before abandoning the air-conditioned bliss of the Grande Galerie for the Jardin des Tuileries next door, and lie down on a sunny spot of grass amongst chattering tourists, languages mixing over the white noise of the remote-controlled boats dancing on the sparkling water of the fountain. Eggsy is soaked in sunlight, eyes hidden under a lazy hand as Harry sits cross-legged next to him with a sketchbook on his knee. He is a hair away from being Brenet’s _Sleeping Endymion_ , kept from his languorous indecency by the flimsy vest and think tracksuit shorts he barely wears. He has abandoned his canvas trainers to dig his toes in the grass, and Harry reaches out to trail fingertips over them, just to watch them curl under his touch.

Everything feels so quiet and intimate, even in the most touristic city in the world, even surrounded by crowds of tourists and locals. The night before Harry’s birthday, they go up to Montmartre again, get lost in the tiny streets trailing down from the basilica and end up having glasses of Pommard and ice-cold pints of ale in the tiniest, almost decrepit bar where the scrumptious smell of charcuterie and cheese barely covers the stink of the owner’s quietly titterring birds. But the candles paint Eggsy into something as precious as rubies, as delicate as gold, and Harry feels pleasantly drowsy. When the next morning he wakes, he is not surprised to realise he has not heard Eggsy get up, go out, and come back in.

He _is_ surprised to find Eggsy holding a plate where a religieuse proudly sits, a candle flickering on top of it.

“Couldn’t well fit all fifty-seven on this,” Eggsy says softly. “Blow this and I’ll blow you.”

Harry does, and Eggsy does good on his promise, setting the pastry aside to crawl between Harry’s legs and cajole his cock into hardness, murmuring _Come on, don’t we want a kiss?_ in a way that makes Harry laugh and stiffen at the same time, groaning when Eggsy sucks him in. Fifty-seven. Things will be alright, it seems.

“The lady said it’s a _religieuse_ ,” Eggsy says carefully, later, snuggled up with his head on Harry shoulder as he stuffs the smaller chou inside Harry’s mouth. He sucks on a spot of ganache on his thumb, kisses chocolate from Harry’s lips. “Means _religious_ or something, yeah? Thought it was funny.”

“It means _nun_ ,” Harry tells him in a low voice, smiling when Eggsy laughs. “More, please,” he asks. Eggsy feeds him a smear of crème patissière, then a bite of chou. “Is it hot out again today?” Eggsy nods. “On the year I was born, my mother _loved_ telling this story, it was the first dry day after two weeks of relentless rain, and my mother always said it was because I cried a sky’s worth on my first day on Earth.” He huffs out a breath of laughter, accepts a bite of his birthday religieuse from a gently smiling Eggsy. “Lord, bless her. I was a fussy baby, according to them. My father said I took it all out in my first few years, then turned into the easiest little boy, or so I was told. I was convinced the world was made of sunshine and sweets. On my ninth birthday, I thought all the people in my parents’ house were there to celebrate my birthday - I didn’t realise until Armstrong stepped on the Moon.”

“Oh that’s adorable,” Eggsy mutters. He feeds him a last bite of religieuse before swallowing the rest of it, chewing with his eyes half-shut.

“You are adorable,” Harry whispers, leaning in to kiss him, soft and warm and tasting like chocolate.

Things are wonderful.

They spend another week in Paris, time split between the bed and museums. Eggsy takes as many pictures of the sculptures and buildings as he does of the visitors milling about around them. It’s absolutely brilliant to watch him work, fingers moving deftly now over buttons and focus rings, holding his breath to push the shutter button, smiling as he observes people from behind the thick body of the camera.

At the beginning of August they go back to England, heading directly for Eastbourne with hardly a couple of hours spent in sweltering, sticky London. Eggsy swims every day, returning to Harry soaked in seawater that dries off on his skin leaving a salty dust for Harry to lick off later, making waves of bedsheets for Eggsy to let himself be pulled under. There’s ice cream, as promised, ninety-nines eaten on the sparsely-filled shingle beaches where no one sees Eggsy foot crawl over Harry’s thigh to tease at his cock through his trousers. Harry is grateful for the isolation of the Pennings when he gets to see Eggsy looking ready to be painted by Manet, naked but for a blanket of sunlight, looking radiant on the sheet he’s dragged outside to lay on it. Harry sits cross-legged on the grass to sketch him, resolves to paint it someday, the insolent spread Eggsy makes, the way the sun brings out every freckle on his body.

“Are you hard?” Eggsy murmurs, lazy and cheeky, nudging at Harry’s indeed stiff cock through his trousers. “Open up. Keep drawing.”

Harry turns to another page to sketch it with a shaky hand: Eggsy, gorgeous, tempting, decadent, the light breeze having made shyly pink flower buds of his nipples, his cock half-hard, his feet cradling Harry’s prick; and the corner of the sketchbook centimetres away from it makes it all so much dirtier, somehow. Payback comes a few days later, when Eggsy stops fucking him to grab the Polaroid camera sitting on the nightstand and slides back into Harry with the camera in hand, captures Harry’s mouth before leaning back to capture his face, his fist around his cock, his throat, his mouth again. He takes a picture of Harry with his Nikon afterwards, of his full body spread out spent and lazy on the bed with the Polaroid pictures around him like fallen autumn leaves. 

The day they are ready to leave for London, George arrives with Christopher, Marianne, and little Olivia and Rebecca. It’s not as strange as it could have been, Eggsy meeting what is left of his family: Marianne automatically loves whomever gets along with her little girls, Christopher seems genuinely interested in Eggsy’s work with film photography, and George laughs at Harry when he notices Eggsy wearing his signet ring.

“You seem happy,” he tells Harry as they stand in the conservatory with a drink of port. Eggsy is playing footie with Rebecca and Christopher outside. Even Olivia, moody like only an eleven-year-old girl can be, laughs and joins in the fun.

“I really, really am,” Harry tells his brother, and he finds it’s entirely true.

The heat is almost unbearable in London, away from the sea, and when they celebrate Eggsy’s birthday they walk home in the unreasonably warm weather hand in hand after dinner and drinks in a quiet restaurant in Chelsea. Eggsy had asked him quite pointedly not to make a huge fuss, but had blushed very prettily when the waiter had quietly brought a slice of chocolate fudge cake with a single candle on top, and two flutes of the house champagne with his best wishes.

Harry feels like he’s walking on a cloud, only anchored to Earth by Eggsy’s hand in his, his quietly adoring eyes turning fondly exasperated when, back at the house, Harry hands him a small pile of boxes wrapped in golden paper. He tears the paper quickly and opens big eyes at the lens hiding under it, then at the exquisitely soft cashmere bundled up in layers of tissue paper ( _Youth wearing a skull, Vanity, oil on canvas_ , he teases when Eggsy slips it on quickly to gauge the fit), and once again at the light grey box bearing Vivienne Westwood’s name in golden letters when he lifts the top to reveal the dark sports jacket nestled inside. Harry gets a volley of curses and kisses afterwards, hushes Eggsy’s protests with his mouth on his, swallowing his words until Eggsy grows quiet, then loud again for a very different reason.

“Can’t believe you,” Eggsy tells him later in bed, his head on Harry’s torso. His finger is tapping on Harry’s skin, absently drumming along to the beat of his heart. “Can’t believe you’re real, can’t believe you want me, can’t believe you fucking _love_ me,” he breathes when Harry strokes his fingers down the length of his spine, shifting to get face to face with him. His lips shape words against Harry’s skin then kisses into his mouth.

Harry feels lighter and warmer than the scorching summer air finally leaving London, little by little. Eggsy visits friends and family, leaving Harry missing him most childishly until he returns. In the mornings Harry takes to finding him downstairs more often than not, typing on his phone but having brewed Harry’s tea for him, lemon, sugar and milk. He kisses Harry, tells him there’s bread in the toaster or jam in the cupboard, a message about this or that on the ansaphone, and as soon as Harry comes back after listening to the messages, he sets his bare toes against Harry’s ankle and keeps them there the whole time. 

They settle into a routine, and when Harry wakes one morning in late September, he showers, shaves, dresses, and feels the smile on his lips stretch with every step he takes down the stairs.

“Hello, love,” Harry calls when he comes down the hall, but when he turns into the kitchen he finds it empty. There are only crumbs on the table, not the cup of tea and the delightful boy who brews it every day.

Harry blinks and puts the kettle on before crossing back to the hall to head towards to the living room. Eggsy isn’t in the living room either, and when Harry passes through the hall again he presses the button on the ansaphone absently. Eggsy’s trainers are not in their usual spot by the door, next to Harry’s oxfords. He stops and stares, barely registering the droning of the ansaphone, not before he hears:

_Harry_ , a very familiar voice says, _This is Chester King_.

Harry turns to the ansaphone, stares at it instead, his hand shooting up to push the _Delete_ button.

_There is no changing your mind, then. I saw the announcement from Penguin Classics. I expect you understand the damage this will irrevocably do to your already dwindling career. And all that for a fling_ , he says, his mouth making a hiss out of the last word. _You’ll get bored soon enough, Harry. I know you, and I know his type. Vermin, Harry. That’s all they are, no matter how much you charitably try to change them. I trust one day you will realise it and see the boy for who and what he truly is - after all, you and I have always seen eye to eye on these matters, haven’t we? I’ll expect to hear from you soon._

“Eggsy!” Harry calls. The kettle whistles in the kitchen, the sound too loud in the empty house. Yesterday Eggsy’s mocking voice had carried over the shrill noise as he mimicked the shy journalist he’d heard leave a message for Harry earlier. “Eggsy,” he repeats, walking back up the stairs. Of course Eggsy isn’t in the bedroom, or in either bathroom. Harry strides across the hall and opens the door to the guest room.

It’s empty.

It has been for the past few months, save for the clothes Eggsy kept in the closet inside. Harry feels dread slide down to the pit of his stomach like an ice cube. He opens the closet door and finds two shelves empty, not even a tee-shirt left behind. The bags stowed there have disappeared. Harry’s heart pounds up to his brain, a steady throbbing pulsing between his temples.

On the bed, two items have been left: a bomber jacket and a cashmere jumper, folded side by side, like Eggsy set them aside and is about the enter the room in jeans and a tee-shirt to kiss Harry and finish getting dressed.

Harry looks at the doorway longer than he should.

When he rings Eggsy’s cellphone, Harry doesn’t get any answer. Eventually he gives up, goes back downstairs and pours himself a glass of scotch. He sits heavily on the sofa, frowning at nothing, at the pointedly empty _nothing_ taking up the whole room after Eggsy has left. Harry takes a long drink and waits for the door to open.

The sketchbook is still sitting on the end table in the drawing room.

Pinching his mouth, Harry reaches out to grab it. There’s something wedged between the pages, something too big for it to fit there. It gleams as brightly as the scotch filling the crystal tumbler. The signet ring falls in Harry’s palm when he opens the sketchbook, and he stares at it for a moment before his eyes are drawn to the page underneath.

It’s that first sketch of Eggsy - the first he’d even done, based on a glimpse of the loveliest boy in the world blushing in anger at the corner of the Gloucester Road tube station. The graphite has smudged a little, and it only serves to make the deep black line cutting through the blurred handwriting at the bottom of the page all the more striking.

It looks like a wound, a deep graphite wound, where Eggsy slashed across _Galatea_. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A lovely [cashmere](http://www.alexandermcqueen.com/gb/alexandermcqueen/jumper_cod39646354je.html#dept=m_knitwear) [jumper](https://65.media.tumblr.com/48e881e0dcedb87a64042a90b690403e/tumblr_of605upHLD1vvdm7qo2_1280.jpg) and a darling [sports](http://www.viviennewestwood.com/en-gb/shop/mens/clothing/jackets/navy-sport-line-jacket) [jacket](https://67.media.tumblr.com/43de1f777db690db707aebce0dfe1682/tumblr_of605upHLD1vvdm7qo1_1280.png).


	26. Chapter 26

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, here it is. I could provide explanations, but I could also just let you read in peace.
> 
> [_Untitled (Winter)_](http://aperture.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/rick-sands-workshop.jpg) by Gregory Crewdson, 2004.
> 
> Thank you to those who gave it a look, and to all of you giving it a read today. On [Twitter](https://twitter.com/callmealois).

Harry spends his day answering emails from Penguin Classics with short, clipped answers, undaring to leave the house in case Eggsy comes home. That evening, Harry goes to bed early. He puts his pyjamas on and throws the sheets back, only to find Eggsy’s sleep shirt, balled up inside out under his pillow.

_He woke up_ , Harry thinks, _Showered, got dressed, had breakfast, heard the message on the ansaphone, and ran off_.

Harry pulls the sheets back in place, goes downstairs, and drinks until he falls asleep on the sofa.

The last week of September is spent sending Eggsy text message after text message - _Please just let me know you are safe_ , _I do not understand how you could believe a word he said_ , _Tell me how I can fix this_ , _I miss you_ \- all growing more and more agitated as Harry himself does. The last Thursday of September, he leaves the house for a trip to Waitrose and loads his basket with frozen meals and two bottles of Tanqueray. On the way out, he stops by the tobacco counter.

“Ten pack of Rothmans, please,” he asks, and the elderly woman manning the counter tilts her head to the side.

“They haven’t made those in years, love,” she says.

“I don’t - I haven’t smoked in years, I apologise,” Harry mutters. “Regular pack, then.”

The woman stares at him before turning around to grab the pack, then glances up sharply when Harry sets his shopping bag down on the counter and the bottles inside clink together happily.

“Five eighty-nine, please,” she says. “One would think we’re a bit old for heartbreak,” she adds with a small smile when Harry hands her a fiver and a small assortment of coins. A line of pale skin cuts the tanned, age-spotted skin of her ring finger.

“Yes,” Harry tells her, and he nods stiffly before striding out.

Back at the house, he lights a cigarette and pours himself a drink before ringing Merlin.

“Eggsy’s gone,” he says. The words leave his throat dry, and he wets it with a drink of gin. Merlin is silent on the other end of the line.

“Come by the house Sunday at six,” Merlin tells him. “We’ll have a drink.”

“God, _yes please_ ,” Harry mumbles into the rim of his glass.

“Take it easy, Harry,” Merlin says. “I’ll see you Sunday.”

Harry drinks another glass, two more with dinner, a fifth one for pudding, and sleeps on the sofa again. He wakes at some point too early in the morning feeling cold and disoriented. The house is quiet and dark, but the antique clock in the drawing room chimes five at him. He groans and swallows a mouthful of gin from the bottle left on the coffee table to wash the taste of last night’s drinks out of his mouth, and fumbles for his cellphone.

No new messages. No missed calls.

Friday is much of the same. Harry downs two tablets of paracetamol with his morning tea, and barely resists tipping the last of the gin into the cup. The ansaphone has one new message, which he deletes immediately after hearing _Harry, this is Chester King._ He tries reading a book but finds he can’t focus, turns on the telly and shuts it off a few minutes later. He smokes a cigarette and turns his cellphone over and over between his hands; pours himself what’s left of the Tanqueray and eats two of Eggsy’s leftover biscuits. The shiny packets and smooth boxes still sit stacked next to Harry’s teas in the cupboard, Fox’s next to Harrod’s and a box of Yorkshire hardwater decaf nestled close to a wrinkled sleeve of double-stuffed Oreos.

Eggsy is still everywhere- the inside-out cotton tee still buried under his pillow in the bed they shared, a lone sock in the hamper in the ensuite, the defaced notebook sitting on the end table in the drawing room. He left a Waitrose receipt in a book and a sticky stain near the bottle of honey still sitting in a kitchen cupboard.

Harry has left dozens of messages on his cellphone and sent many more unanswered texts.

_Please at least have the decency to tell me to never speak to you again_ , he writes during the smoky, cold hours between Friday night and Saturday morning. _Anything you want_.

Three hours later, at the cusp of dawn, Harry awakes curled up on the sofa to his cell phone vibrating loudly on the side table next to his head. There’s no sound at first, then the rustling of sheets and a too-even breathing on the other end of the line. Harry’s heart skips a beat, and he fumbles to sit up.

“Eggsy?” he asks. The boy’s name comes out strangled and croaky. Harry coughs in the crook of his elbow, sends a blind hand skittering on the smooth surface of the table. The glass he finds and brings to his lips holds a few dregs of gin. “ _Eggsy_?” he repeats.

“Harry,” Eggsy says in a hushed voice. Harry pictures him curled up somewhere, on a friend’s sofa or in his childhood bed at his parents’ flat, in a dim-lit hostel bunk or anywhere else, hopefully safe, awfully far from Harry. “Can you- meet me at the tube station later today. At ten. Tube station at ten, yeah?”

“Yes,” Harry answers immediately. “ _Yes_. Eggsy, dear, of course- anything you want.” When Eggsy doesn’t say anything, he continues. “I fear this is merely a misunderstanding.”

“Tube station, at ten,” Eggsy repeats after a long pause. “See you later.”

Before Harry can answer, the line goes silent.

In the never-ending handful of hours before ten, Harry showers and shaves and putters around the house restlessly, cleans the ashtray then immediately craves a cigarette, eats a biscuit and then drinks two glasses of water when he finds his mouth impossibly dry. He tidies the downstairs loo and cards his fingers through Mr Pickle’s soft fur a few times, almost absently. Breakfast is another biscuit and one, two, three fingers of scotch. At half past nine he stands in front of the mirror in the entryway and touches the knot of his tie repeatedly, brushes fingertips to his hair, and stares at the clock obsessively; at twenty to ten he leaves the house and the quiet Mews for Gloucester Road.

It takes Harry a cigarette’s worth of time to reach the underground station, and Eggsy is nowhere in sight. Harry pinches his lips, leans on his umbrella, and lights himself another cigarette.

“Did you start smoking? Fucking hell, Harry.”

Eggsy stands before him, pale and rumpled and gorgeous. His eyes look heavy and dark, even in the white morning light, and he pinches his lips when Harry keeps staring at him silently.

“Eggsy,” he says.

Immediately, Harry wants to pull him in his arms and beg him to come home, pull him close to kiss the breath out of him. He can picture it: Eggsy’s sharp little intake of breath, his lips cold and hard under his before he relaxes and kisses Harry back ferociously, digs fingers into his back and his neck, and returns to fill the void he’s left in Harry’s house and life.

Harry does not kiss him.

“Can we go somewhere and talk for a bit?” Eggsy says, looking down then up at the shops lining Gloucester Road; looking anywhere but at Harry.

“Anything.” Harry answers, and Eggsy nods stiffly before turning around to cross the road.

They end up at Burger King, of all places, where they sit across from each other on uncomfortable red chairs. Everything is sticky, from the floor to the table. The restaurant is loud with the chatter of patrons and the scraping of chairs on tiles, the crinkling of paper and the sizzling sounding from the kitchen. Eggsy is quiet - Harry watches him fidget with the wrapper of his straw, then run a finger down the side of his drink. Condensation gathers and runs down the shiny plastic of the cup in a thin rivulet.

“Eggsy,” Harry begins gently, “What Chester said in this message, you cannot possibly believe a word of it.”

“Well fucking watch me,” Eggsy mumbles. His eyelids are slow and heavy, his speech so fast it comes out slurred. Harry looks away when he leans down to suck some of the vanilla shake into his mouth.

“How can you throw it all away because of bloody _Chester King_?” Harry asks. Eggsy looks up sharply.

“Fucking hell, Harry,” Eggsy says, blinking at him. “Why’s it always got to be someone else’s fault with you? You really think it only takes one fucking message?” When Harry opens his mouth, Eggsy shakes his head. “It’s you and me, Harry, it ain’t your family or your boss. It’s _you_. Jesus, it’s like your work, it can’t all be on others, now, can it?” Under the too-bright, too-cool neon lights, Eggsy’s skin looks paler, starkly darker under his eyes. 

“Have you smoked?” Harry asks in a low tone. Eggsy huffs out a humourless burst of laughter.

“Like you have room to talk,” he answers. “Just past ten and you’ve already gone and broken out the booze, ain’t you.”

It’s too cold in the air-conditioned restaurant, hardly any warmer than outside. Harry folds his hands around the paper cup of too-weak tea sitting in front of him.

“Talk to me.” Harry tells him.

Eggsy blinks, drums fingertips to the side of his cup, licks his lips, and talks.

“It wasn’t - it ain’t all bad,” he begins, slowly, “But… But it’s like, I think about it, I think about you and I think well, okay, it ain’t all bad. You make me feel good too, you make me feel fucking fantastic, and it makes it worth it, I think, then I realise - I realise I sound like my mum when she talks about Dean-”

“I would never hurt you,” Harry interrupts, and Eggsy sighs and shakes his head. “Have I - tell me, Eggsy.”

“Fuck, even now I wanna tell you you haven’t, you know?” He rubs a hand over his face. His fingers are damp with the condensation from his drink. “Don’t - don’t make this about you-”

“What else could it possibly be about - Eggsy, you can’t ask me to take responsibility for my actions and then-”

“Can I fucking talk for one minute?” Eggsy says loudly. A pair of teenagers sitting not far from them turn their heads sharply towards them before giggling at each other. Harry pinches his lips. “God, it’s always - you don’t _have_ to understand how people fucking feel, Harry. Just fucking accept it. You and I, we’ll never understand each other, yeah? You’re all posh and it’s like Chester said, you can’t change me.”

“Eggsy-”

“ _No_.” Eggsy shakes his head, tears the wrapper of his straw into small bits. “You can’t change me. I’ll always be like this. And - shit fuck hell, Harry, I ain’t perfect.” He blinks at the table, his brow furrowed. “It makes me feel like shit every time you say it, ‘cause I ain’t, I really ain’t, and one day you’ll realise it and then.” Eggsy stops abruptly, but Harry doesn’t say anything. His throat is dry. The cup under his fingers has cooled considerably. He doesn’t drink. “This… This thing, this idea you have of me - it’s not me, Harry. And I can’t - that’ll never be me.”

“It is… _Something_ I see in you,” Harry starts slowly. He reaches tentatively to take Eggsy’s hand, but his fingers curl into a fist and his hands disappear under his elbows when he crosses his arms. “I have told you before, Eggsy, you are perfect for me. This is not a general statement, this is a very subjective one. I sincerely believe that.”

“Like I was made for you, yeah?” Eggsy asks him, eyes narrowed to slits. Harry hesitates, nods briefly, and bites his lip when Eggsy barks another humourless laugh. “Nobody made me for you. Nobody. Not even you, Harry. You didn’t make me. _I_ made me.”

“I know that,” Harry protests. His heart hurts, inside his chest. He longs for the soothing heat of a few sips or a few glasses of whiskey, bites his lip harder.

“I _feel_ shit. I can’t be just a pretty thing you like to stare at.”

“And you are not, Eggsy, dear, darling Eggsy,” Harry says gently. His heart pounds when Eggsy shakes his head almost derisively. “You _have_ to talk to me. You are young-”

The chair scrapes loudly against the tiled floor when Eggsy pushes himself away from the table to distance himself from Harry, arms crossed firmly over his chest and his chin tipped up. It’s painful, to see Eggsy like this, so defensive it bleeds into the way he holds himself almost naturally; to see that defensiveness directed at himself. Eggsy has always been an open book, but Harry never considered it might not be one that ends happily.

“Always that - you’re too old, I’m too fucking young - fucking hell, Harry, can you not treat me like a child?”

Harry had never considered that Eggsy might hurt him someday, purposefully - and that he would want to hurt him back.

“Perhaps you wouldn’t feel I am treating you like a child if you didn’t act like one.”

He regrets it the second the words are out and sitting heavily between them. They cut Eggsy’s mouth into a thin, twisted line.

“Like you said,” Eggsy says, too loud, too brash, “You’re too old for this shit. Then be my fucking guest, Harry, leave. You’ll leave sooner or later, yeah? You’ll find some pretty boy to stare at and I’ll go back to living with my mum so my stepdad can go back to kicking my arse.”

“I’ve never - it has never been like this with anyone else, Eggsy, before you I had never…”

“Shat where you ate?” Eggsy offers. “Thing is, Harry, when you do that it ain’t you who’s getting shit on. You get to go back to your posh house and complain that not enough people want to drop ten bags on a fucking painting you made, but after December - I ain’t getting paid. I’ve got to go back to stocking shelves and cleaning dishes and selling my stepdad’s shit to my mates.”

His words, and Eggsy himself, feel like a knife deep in Harry’s chest, getting twisted around with every word Eggsy hammers on him to drive the point home.

“I get to go back to sitting alone in an empty house.” Harry points out.

“Yeah,” Eggsy mutters. “Think at this point you’d have taken anyone home.”

It’s Harry’s turn to blink silently at Eggsy. He wants to remind him it took him three tries before Eggsy even agreed to pose for him, that he spent two months agonising over whether or not the world would end if he kissed the mole at the center of Eggsy’s throat. That if he had been willing to take anyone home, he would have given up and tried another handsome young man.

“And perhaps you would have taken any bloody saviour.” Harry says instead. He watches Eggsy’s sea-green eyes go dark like a storm is brewing inside of him.

“Don’t fucking dare- I ain’t got any illusions about you, Harry. You’re a fucking drunk who’s too scared to fail to do anything, you blame shit you could change on others, you still ain’t over your dad dying ‘cause you know what? You want people to be exactly how you want them to be, fucking _perfect for you_ , my arse, and you won’t accept your parents grew old and died ‘cause it means you’ll die someday too.”

“I am rather impressed you of all people have the audacity to tell me I am scared of failure,” Harry answers through his teeth. “It’s rather comfortable, isn’t it? To not try anything because you might fail, or worse perhaps, _succeed_.”

“I fucking tried!” Eggsy shouts. “I spent weeks working on it with Roxy, the fucking portfolio and the letter and all, dropped a bloody fiver on a stamp and I _failed_ , Harry, I fucking failed.”

Silence rings in Harry’s ears after this. It’s far from being silent - the lunch hour approaches and people are getting chips and sodas, burgers and teas, crowding around the tables with their bright trays, talking, laughing, going about their day while the world is ending.

“You sent an application somewhere?” he murmurs.

“I didn’t want to tell you,” Eggsy mumbles. “I figured, they say _yes_ I’ll tell you and you’ll be fucking happy and _no_ , well, I won’t tell you shit and it’ll be like it never happened.”

“I never- I didn’t-” Harry stammers, looks down at the table. Eggsy’s milkshake has left a condensation ring on the smooth surface of the table. “Please, Eggsy, tell me you did it for yourself and not for me.”

Eggsy doesn’t say anything back. Harry forces his eyes back on him - even now he’s gorgeous, even now Harry wants graphite for the mess of his hair and oils for the blush anger has thrown on his cheeks.

“ _Eggsy_ -”

“I don’t even fucking know,” Eggsy says, quick and low, his lips barely moving. “It’s a fucking trip, Harry, d’you realise that? Good shit don’t happen to me.”

Harry blinks at the table, at the bits of wrapper Eggsy has torn over and over, the pile it has left on the sticky surface like discarded confetti. He looks at the nervous scratching Eggsy’s finger is doing on the side of his thumb, the shiny condensation ring, the steadily melting shake in his plastic cup.

“I can’t - Eggsy, I cannot take responsibility for your entire happiness or lack thereof,” Harry says. It comes out colder than he means to. He licks his lips, tries again. “You cannot completely rely on me in regards to your well-being.”

“Don’t tell me,” Eggsy mutters. The apples of his cheek grow crimson. He remains silent for a beat before blurting out, “You ain’t allowed to say that now. Not when you let me live with you and when my family’s depending on your fucking money and when you told me you loved me. You can’t do all that then back the fuck off when it stops being interesting to you.”

“Perhaps at my age I should be able to decide what I am allowed to say or not.” Harry answers in a low voice. His entire mouth is dry, but the watery tea in his paper cup has grown unpleasantly cold. He drinks it anyway, and longs for another bottle of gin the whole time.

“That’s what you don’t fucking get, Harry,” Eggsy says, meeting his eyes for a second before looking down at the vanilla slurry in his cup. “Maybe you’re too old for me, maybe I’m too young for you, but we ain’t… We’re too different. Your boss is right. M’just a fucking chav. You’ve no idea what it’s like, do you? It’s like I told you last year. A fucking year, can’t believe it,” he mumbles into his straw before he takes a sip. Harry’s throat feels dry as sandpaper. “King said it. _Vermin_ ,” he drawls. “I thought you saw _eye to eye on these matters_ or some shit, yeah? How you want me not to believe something people have told me my whole bloody life?”

It feels like hands around Harry’s neck, the fierceness of Eggsy’s voice. Harry has no doubt he believes every single one of the words that leave his mouth quick as gunfire. When he stops Harry hardly dares to breathe. The sticky, scuffed table between them is a no man’s land and Harry crowds his shaky fingers against the palms of his hands.

“Your whole life is ahead of you,” Harry tells him at last. Eggsy raises his eyebrows, shakes his head derisively. “Could you please explain instead of dismissing everything I tell you? Need I remind you I was twenty-five once?”

“Yeah,” Eggsy says loudly. “Twenty-five getting screwed over by your fucking boss. Fifty-seven now and you won’t do shit about it. Y’think that makes me feel like I could be a fucking artist? Can’t even find a bloody job full-time.”

“Perhaps if you-”

“ _Don’t_. Don’t fucking tell me I ain’t done things right. I went and done things right and wrong and nothing helps. I ain’t taking job advice from you.”

Harry lets the words hang between them, linger like stagnant smoke in a windowless room, and tries to wait for them to dissipate.

“Why did you ask to see me today?” he asks at last. His hands, when he looks down at them, are quietly shaking. The neon lights makes his skin look too pale, too spotted, too wrinkly; his veins take Baudelaire’s Lethe waters-green hue.

“Fuck if I know,” Eggsy mutters. He touches his lips to the straw of his drink, but pulls away without even taking a sip.

“Would you like something to eat?” Harry asks him. Eggsy looks pale, the skin around his eyes almost greyish. “Some chips-”

“ _Don’t_. Don’t act like any of this shit is normal.”

“How much did you smoke-”

“How much did you fucking drink?” Eggsy says, a little too loud. 

Heads turn, a mother tuts at them and pushes her children along. Out the corner of his eye, Harry spots two employees talking to each other with their eyes trained on Eggsy.

“I only wish for your happiness,” Harry tells him as earnestly as he can, his tone low. He swallows hard, like he could take the words back in, when Eggsy laughs derisively.

“Nah,” he dismisses, “You want me to be happy _your way_ but thing is, Harry?” He looks down at the melted slush in his cup. “Maybe I can’t. Maybe I can’t be what you want me to be.”

His words come out slurred. His eyelashes are fluttering. He looks the way he had the day after Valentine’s day, when he’d bustled into Harry’s kitchen wind-frozen and mind-broken. But Harry can’t well order him on the sofa and make him a cuppa now.

“What happened?” he asks, half at the thought and half at Eggsy. This morning’s generous helping of scotch makes his stomach churn, the milk from his tea turning sour. 

His throat burns.

_This is happening._

Eggsy crumbles in front of him like a precariously built house of cards, blinks, blinks, blinks and looks pointedly somewhere beyond Harry.

_This is what is happening now._

“Nothing,” Eggsy says finally. “Was all me. All I ain’t.”

A child at a table uncomfortably close to them cries to be allowed to eat their pudding with their chips. Two Boots pharmacists, jackets hastily thrown over their white uniforms, eye their table before one mutters to the other and hurries her along. The world is ending and a man at the counter is yelling at a minimum wage employee that his one-quid hamburger is cold. The world is ending and all Harry can say is:

“I cannot fix what I am unaware is not working,” he says slowly, cautiously. Eggsy sets his jaw, his tendons stretching into hard lines under his skin, just one quick brush of the pencil, barely there in a sketch. Too present under the overly bright neons, under Eggsy’s pale and clammy-looking skin. “Eggsy. My dear Eggsy. I cannot read your mind.” Eggsy swallows, shakes his head, nods. He looks a second away from sprinting off. “ _Eggsy_. Can we please talk about this like adults?”

Eggsy’s mouth twists into a mean little line, sharp enough to make something hurt in Harry’s chest like he’s been wounded.

(When his nephew was five, his schoolyard girlfriend moved to Poland with her family, effectively ending their two-month romance. Christopher had been crushed, that Christmas well over twenty years ago. Harry’s father had taken him on his knee on that big, horrible armchair that sat in the parlour of their London house. _You know how Grandad is a surgeon, Christopher?_ Bert had asked, and Christopher had nodded gravely. _I know all about your organs - all the things inside of you that make your body work._ Harry had sketched that scene, he remembers, Bert looking as bright as he wanted to remember him; Christopher small and patient. _And you know what, Christopher? Hearts do not break. They simply do not._ )

The world is ending.

“No,” Eggsy says. He stands up. Breathes. “No.”

_This is what is happening right now._

“I love you,” Harry tells him. Eggsy looks away when Harry tries to look him in the eye.

He doesn’t say anything. He turns his head, then his heel and leaves. Eggsy walks out of Harry’s life as hurriedly as he walked into it.

Part of Harry wants it to be bigger. It can’t end like this, can it? That part is the one who studied in Italy so long ago, who learnt to kiss foreigners on the cheek, who asked a young stranger who smashed into him across the street from that ghastly Burger King, _Sit for me_. That part wants to say, _Don’t look back, you’ll turn to stone._

Harry can hear Eggsy shout, _Wouldn’t you love that?_

And all of him crumples over the table.

It takes him a few minutes to get up, gather their rubbish, and walk out. People stare. Harry walks into Tesco next door, purchases another pack of Rothmans and a bottle of Tanqueray, and goes home.

Harry sits on his sofa and stares at the sketchbook still, _still_ sitting on the end table. He wants to break something, so he settles on the seal on the bottle of gin. He drinks a full glass from a whiskey tumbler and smokes a cigarette before walking to the kitchen for biscuits. The box of jaffa cakes he finds has been closed carelessly and the sponges have gone dry, but he eats them anyway.

Once in front of the recycling bin, Harry looks at the box in his hand and thinks, _Eggsy didn’t close the box properly._

He goes back to the drawing room and has another glass of gin.

Harry keeps sipping until everything fuzzes into cigarette smoke and he finds himself sprawled on the sofa.

“I apologise,” he tells the room, and he falls asleep.

When he wakes it is dark out, and his watch confirms the afternoon has come and gone. Harry fixes himself toast and microwaved beans for tea; pairs it all with gin. He has a cigarette for pudding, dozes off for a minute or sixty, and wakes up to the startling realisation he’s about to be sick. Harry vomits his half-digested dinner under Mr Pickle’s eyes and takes a shower before dragging himself to bed out of pure muscle memory.

Morning pounds between his temples like an over-eager salesman. He is horrified to find himself holding the frayed hem of Eggsy’s sleep shirt, and dry-heaves over the loo for a few minutes before taking another shower.

Halfway down the stairs Harry stops to breathe. The house is quiet and still. He closes his eyes, tries to remember the smell of toast and margarine in the morning, tea brewing, the kettle whistling. Some nonsense music playing tinnily on Eggsy’s phone. Eggsy’s voice, quick and amused, talking to a friend on his cell. Eggsy.

Harry breathes out, opens his eyes, and walks down the rest of the way. He makes toast and tea; smears Benecol and adds lemon, sugar, and milk. The kitchen feels too quiet, and he remembers he used to listen to the radio in the morning. He turns it on. It feels too loud. He turns it off.

He does not listen to the messages on the ansaphone.

His cellphone has no new notifications. Harry putters around the kitchen, cleans the sink, smokes a cigarette. Out the window, past the quiet mews, he sees people walk by on Gloucester Road, some stepping in to gaze at the picturesque townhouses. Everything looks desaturated in the early morning light. It’s the first of October and the cobblestone is littered with dead leaves.

Harry goes back to the drawing room when a man stops at the entrance of the mews and drags his partner to look at the white facades.

As soon as he walks in he spots his bottle of gin on the coffee table, and he pinches his lips. _I will not_ , he thinks.

The sketchbook is still sitting on the end table, and Harry remembers the way Eggsy stroke through the word _Galatea_. He remembers the cut of Eggsy’s mouth before he said _No_. _No_.

Harry splashes gin on his fingers when he pours himself a shaky drink.

Morning is spent drinking and dozing on the sofa. Harry keeps startling himself awake, including one particularly awful instance where he wakes because a car door slams shut somewhere not far. For a second he expects it to be Eggsy, and when his name gets stuck in his throat Harry has another drink to wash it down.

He makes toast and Benecol for lunch. _Have you seen yourself?_ he thinks while his toast browns. He can hardly keep his eyes open or his body standing. He drinks as much water as he can stand and makes himself tea. The cigarette he has after one and a half pieces of toast leaves him feeling nauseous.

_Hearts do not break_ , Harry reminds himself when he stumbles out into the cool streets at ten to six. He struggles with his lighter even inside the mews, and out on Gloucester Road the wind slaps his cheeks fiercely. When he arrives on Gilston Road he faces Merlin five minutes late, red-faced, and feeling more sober than he has all weekend.

“Late again,” Merlin tells him from the front door, atop the set of concrete steps. “God’s sake, Harry, have you seen yourself?” he mutters, stepping aside to let Harry in.

His hands are startlingly warm against Harry’s cold skin when he steps behind him to urge him to take off his coat. The heat is running in the house, and Harry feels pleasantly warm soon enough. Merlin leads him to the small reception room off his study. Harry sinks gratefully into one of the old Chesterfield chairs facing each other. The leather, gone soft and buttery with age and use, is nicely cool when Harry turns to rest his forehead against it.

“Where do you want to start?” Merlin asks, bringing two glasses and an ashtray.

“You always seem so much more comfortable here than anywhere else,” Harry tells him. It’s true. Not only in the way Merlin appears more at ease in hisworn cashmere jumper and woolen trousers than any business or formal attire.

“Alright,” Merlin says breezily, “I was thinking more along the lines of you reeking of gin and smoke.”

“Eggsy left,” Harry sighs. Merlin leaves, returns with a bottle of water and fills one of the crystal tumblers up to the brim. “You mentioned a drink?”

“Drink this for now,” Merlin tells him dryly. “I reckon you’ve had enough for a while.”

The house is quiet but warm, a clock ticking somewhere, Merlin’s computers humming in his study next door. Harry relaxes in the chair little by little and drinks half of his water politely.

“Where’s Grace?” he asks finally. “I should say hello, at least-”

“She’s stayed in Brook Green after Sunday roast.”

“Am I keeping you from your family?” Harry asks abruptly, standing up so fast his vision goes dark and blurry around the edges.

“Sit your bum back down,” Merlin says loudly. “I just got home, I was there all day.”

“ _Bum_ ,” Harry says faintly as he sprawls back in the chair, eyes shut.

“Maeve just started school. Can’t well say _arse_ around her. Brian isn’t overly fond of _bum_ either - see,” he adds, digging out a cigarette case out of his trousers, “This is precisely why I needed time away.”

“All the more reason to pour us a drink.”

He cracks open one eye to look at Merlin, his expression unreadable behind the smoke of his Marlboro. When Merlin stands up with a shake of his head, Harry straightens up enough to steal a cigarette from the case left on the table. He hears the clinking of decanters or bottles, the hissing of a can, the clatter of ice cubes. Harry opens his eyes when Merlin returns and spares him a dry smile when Merlin hands him a pint of Guinness.

“Alcoholism isn’t something I should compromise on,” Merlin tells him.

Harry doesn’t even try to hide his delight at that first sip. He pulls on the cigarette so the words don’t come out sounding so hard, so dramatic.

“Eggsy left,” he repeats. “Eggsy left.” Merlin is quiet and still, a tumbler of scotch held close to his lips. “For the record, I had been doing better with, with the drinking. But he left. And we met up yesterday.” Merlin takes a sip, so Harry does too. “It was a disaster. Perhaps it wouldn’t be so difficult if everything else wasn’t.”

“What do you mean?”

“Agatha is on my arse about that bloody painting for Penguin Classics; King about Eggsy and the painting both, which, at least one is out of the way now, isn’t it.” He laughs bitterly and feeds his mouth another drink of stout. “I am awfully passé, Merlin. And when I die-”

“Oh, _please_ , Harry. For fucks’s sake, if you utter one word about dying alone and unloved I will feed you to my granddaughter alive.”

Harry laughs humorlessly. He rubs a hand over his face, licks the thick foam off his lips.

“I miss Eggsy terribly,” he says. “I wish I knew what I could give him to get him back. I would give him anything.”

“You gave him too much, Harry.”

He look up sharply. Merlin is considering him, lips tight around the filtre of his cigarette.

“I don’t think _I-_ ”

“This is a boy who had little growing up. Little money, little possessions, little attention, little love. You gave him way too much.”

Harry thinks of that first day on the corner of Gloucester Road station, nearly a year ago. Of Eggsy’s salary, of Christmas presents. Of the way Eggsy thought he could, _had to_ , repay kindness with his body. Christmas. New Years. Valentine’s Day. How Eggsy kept his own things in cheap shopping bags, even inside Harry’s house. How he made him tea, lunch, dinner. His smile turned golden by a birthday candle in Paris. The way Harry had to fold Eggsy’s hands over presents for him to accept them.

“ _Shit_.”

“Drink some of your water,” Merlin says. He sips at his scotch and clears his throat. “You didn’t mean any harm by it, Harry, I know you didn’t. You see good in everyone, including yourself. Including Eggsy. This is another issue.”

Harry swallows the rest of his water and refills his glass. He hesitates and grabs another cigarette from Merlin’s case.

“Eggsy seems to think I see him as an object,” Harry says in a cloud of smoke.

“You do,” Merlin answers, simply, his tone self-evident. “Hopefully not only, but you do. Not only. We both know that. Does he?”

_Look at me, Harry. Me, yeah?_

_I think I’d break the fucking glass._

_Nobody made me for you._

“Shit.”

“Water, Harry.”

“I don’t- do not, absolutely do not see him as an object. He- he’s a wonderful young man. I tried talking to him about school, to work on his photography. I offered to pay for it.”

Merlin grimaces and drains the rest of his glass.

“Do you remember that day Niall and I ran into you both this Summer?” When Harry nods, he continues, “Niall needed to borrow money for bills.”

“I thought he was working near Chancery Lane?”

“He is,” Merlin says. “Part-time, for what I think is criminally low pay. He had been looking for work for two months when he got the offer, so he took it. This is how the job market is, Harry. You know Niall. You know Grace and I and all the opportunities we gave the boys. I am not so sure Eggsy had them.”

“Why not offer to Niall to come back home for a bit?” Harry asks.

“Niall is twenty-five, and stubborn. It took him a month to ask us for money. I believe you know a young man his age?” Harry rests his head against the soft leather, stares at the ceiling. “Things are not as simple as writing cheques for his schooling. This is new for him, and on a path known to be perilous.”

“He sent an application somewhere,” Harry mutters. “He was denied.”

Merlin falls quiet. When Harry tilts his head to look at him he finds him frowning, staring into his glass.

“What possessed you to share details about the Penguin commission with Chester King? I know that ghastly contract - fuck knows I’ve read it over and over - once he’s given permission, he has no say.”

“I haven’t,” Harry murmurs absently, thinking of Eggsy. He sips at his Guinness. “God, the things Chester said about him…”

“The painting, Harry, focus. Drink some water. What did you tell Chester about the bloody painting?”

“For God’s sake, Merlin, what sort of idiot do you take me for? I sent updates to the committee at Penguin Classics and Agatha, no one else.”

They fall silent. Harry has no desire to think of Chester or Agatha or even Penguin Classics. He thinks of the message Chester left on the ansaphone, of Eggsy in the kitchen with a cup of tea hearing every word, of Eggsy and his twenty-four years without Harry or anyone.

“I’m the sort of idiot who doesn’t deserve him,” Harry mumbles under his breath.

Silence stretches, then Harry’s near-empty pint is pried out of his hand. Merlin looms over him when Harry blinks laboriously at him, but he steps back to set the glass on the table. He slips a cigarette between his lips and lights it in a few quick, practiced gestures. Before Harry knows it, Merlin is striding out of the reception room into his study, gone in a cloud of smoke.

“I might not be able to do much when it comes to your love affairs,” Merlin calls from the next room. “But I might be able to do something about your work issues.”


	27. Chapter 27

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tea, and reasons, many of them—apologies and as always thank you for waiting, wondering, reading. Many, many thanks as well to @[literaryoblivion](https://archiveofourown.org/users/literaryoblivion/pseuds/literaryoblivion) who beta-read this at the speed of light!
> 
> As always: on your left you'll find _[Destruction](http://collections.musee-rodin.fr/cache/ea802131-337e-422f-a150-701388260e6a/D.07174.\(R\)_1.jpg)_ by Auguste Rodin, ink on paper from between October 1887 and January 1888. It was drawn by Rodin in Paul Gallimard's 1857 first edition copy of _Flowers of Evil_ by Charles Baudelaire. The lines above the illustration, as translated in 1954 by William Alleger, read:
> 
> _He leads me thus, far from the sight of God,_  
>  _Panting and broken with fatigue, into the midst_  
>  _Of the plains of Ennui, endless and deserted,_
> 
> _And thrusts before my eyes full of bewilderment,_  
>  _Dirty filthy garments and open, gaping wounds,_  
>  _And all the bloody instruments of Destruction!_

When Harry wakes the next morning, it takes him a few minutes to remember where he is. He blinks at the elegant wallpaper for a few seconds before he notices one of his sketches, framed in raw pine, on the wall opposite the bed. A view of Carmarthen. Others are pinned close to it in a very organised grid—the castle, the bay, a street…

_Merlin_ , Harry thinks, and he turns to find a glass of water and two caplets of paracetamol. He’s in the guest bedroom on the lower ground floor of the MacKay house. He slept over last night after hours of talking, first over more water then over a late dinner. Grace had come home at some point and quickly fled to her first-floor study, not before giving her husband a kiss.

Last evening, Merlin had spent hours questioning him on what he had told not only Chester King but also Agatha Sullivan. Harry’s drunken, tired mind had understood little of what Merlin explained whenever Harry asked _why_ it mattered.

“Of course I communicate with my _agent_ ,” Harry had told him while Merlin reheated leftovers lovingly homemade by his daughter-in-law.

“I can’t recall how many phone calls I rerouted to her, Merlin,” he’d added over Margaret’s boeuf bourguignon and mash. “Why wouldn’t she inform me if any of them were of importance?”

“ _Yes_ , Chester recommended her. Both Agatha and I were starting out, it made perfect sense,” Harry had said irritatedly over slices of an apple they shared. His fingers had been sticky with juice, and he’d nicked his thumb with his knife. But more than that, he had sobered up by then and was starting to see Merlin’s point.

“Agatha has been working with me for thirty years,” Harry had told Merlin at last. They were having a post-dinner cigarette, sipping too-hot tea in Merlin’s reception room. “ _Yes_ , her work has been less than satisfactory recently, but perhaps mine has been too. What good can she do if I do none?”

“Access all you bloody want,” he’d mumbled at last while making his way to the entryway, Merlin’s warm hands pushing him towards the stairs. 

Harry had been falling asleep by then, but now in the cool morning light he thinks of all the questions Merlin asked, one after the other. He thinks of his mother unravelling yarn after finding mistakes in her knitting.The guest room smells a little dusty and vaguely like feminine perfume. Merlin’s wife must have made the bed last night, though Harry remembers arguing with Merlin that he could walk home while the man pushed him downstairs and shoved pyjamas in his arms. Merlin had enough mercy to turn on the heat, but not to the point of closing the blinds, or even pulling the drapes. Bastard. Harry digs the heels of his hands into his eyes and breathes in deeply. He drinks the entire glass of water to down the caplets before sighing and getting out of bed to face the world; and the way it stubbornly ignores the fact that it ended on Saturday.

The ensuite bathroom has been done too, hotel and airplane toiletries and a towel waiting for Harry on the sink. He tries to wash the hangover and the shame off, brushes gin and cigarettes out of his mouth, and gets dressed in yesterday’s clothes even though they reek of smoke.

“Morning,” Grace’s voice calls as soon as Harry opens the door to the kitchen. It’s nearly 8, and she’s having tea at the breakfast table. “Did you sleep well? I’ll be leaving soon.”

“I’ll make my way out with you, then,” Harry tells her. She shakes her head, not a single red hair out of place. “Please, Grace. You and Merlin have done enough. Has he left already?”

“Yes. Not for you,” she says softly when Harry frowns. “Client two hours ahead in Finland. But he wants you in his office at 10. I told him to fuck off and that I wasn’t his secretary,” Grace explains as she stands to put the kettle on. “Really, what is the point of hiring pretty boys if he has his old wife make his appointments?”

Harry laughs and takes the cup she hands him. He hasn’t had anyone make him tea since, _since_ , well.

Since.

“Lemon, sugar?” Grace asks absent-mindedly, opening and closing cupboards and drawers.

“Milk,” Harry forces out. “I take milk in my tea. Lemon, sugar, and milk.”

“That’s right,” Grace says. She looks up, one hand inside a tin of tea, to stare at Harry for a few long seconds. “That is right.”

Water is bubbling in the kettle. Grace pours it in the mug and leaves Harry to stare at the steadily darkening tea. She seats herself back at the table and sips at her own cup. Harry adds lemon, sugar, and milk to his and ignores the tremor in his hands. When he returns the sugar to the cupboard, he sees a bottle of cooking rum nestled next to a container of flour. For one second Harry stares at the bottle, pictures the sharp, sweet taste of the rum.

Harry closes the cupboard.

“So you look like shit,” Grace says as she examines the varnish on her short nails. “Let’s chat about that.”

“You look lovely as well,” Harry answers. He takes a sip of tea, considers the seat opposite Grace and leans against the countertops instead. The tea scalds his tongue, but he swallows it anyway, if only to try and chase down the lump in his throat. “I believe Merlin may have mentioned Eggsy at some point over the past year?”

“He may have. Niall, as well. It seems that young man made quite the impression on all my lads.”

“I’m afraid I don’t understand.”

“I know he left,” Grace says with a small, apologetic smile. “Our family is very fond of you, and Niall asked after you and Eggsy yesterday. Brian asked his father who Eggsy was, and I don’t think he meant for them to, but the boys and Maggie quickly guessed why you both had to meet so suddenly on a Sunday.”

Harry looks out the window at the fall-painted garden. He had been closer to the MacKays, back in the nineties when the boys had been younger. They all had been younger, really, quite obviously. There had been a lull, that Harry had expected, as the boys grew up. Merlin and Grace both worked long hours. In the couple of years between their sons leaving home and their granddaughter being born six years ago, they had seen more of each other, then drifted apart again. 

Harry doesn’t know what he feels exactly at the idea of three generations of MacKays talking about him in the parlour around Brian and Margaret’s wedding teasmade. Not alarmingly bad.

“He left,” Harry says. He takes a long sip of tea. The words still leave a sour taste in his mouth. “And I saw him on Saturday. At Burger King, if you can believe it. He told me those things, and I told him _those_ things… God, I can’t believe what we said to each other.”

“Oh, my poor dear,” Grace tells him, “And that’s when he threw an entire off-licence at you, and you fell in an ashtray?”

Harry looks up to find her lips pursed and eyes wide on him in mock shock. Her face relaxes, and she tilts her head to the side. Harry looks down and takes a drink of his tea to hide the smile tugging at his lips.

“That was all me, I am afraid,” he says. “Rather fitting, as he seems to think all the bloody faults in our relationship are all on him.”

“But they are all on you, obviously.”

“I think—” Harry hesitates, looks outside at the fallen leaves, sips at his tea. “I think we share the blame.”

In front of him Grace finishes her tea, elegant, full of poise. She’s looking at him over the rim of the cup.

“Have you told him that?” she asks gently, seriously.

“He won’t fucking talk to me—”

“Did you tell him you loved him, that you missed him?”

“ _Yes_.”

“Oh well fuck then,” Grace sighs, “That’s not scary, oppressive and self-centered at all. Wonder why he hasn’t come back, really.”

The lump in Harry’s throat falls down inside his belly like a stone. He drains the rest of his cup in one go and rubs a hand over his face.

“Harry,” Grace tells him, gentler this time, softer. “ _Listen_ to him. Listen to yourself. You know what you mean, but he doesn’t.”

“Is it not supposed to go both ways?” Harry mutters. “I cannot read his mind.”

“And no one is asking you to.”

Harry stares at a spot in the garden for a moment. The branches of the trees are shivering in the cold October air, the glass wet with morning dew.

“I’d better let you head to work,” Harry says, and he straightens up to gather his and Grace’s empty cups to rinse them and put them in the dishwasher. There’s a slight lipstick stain on the rim of Grace’s cup. Harry rubs at it under the running tap, sighing when Grace lays a hand on his back for an instant. “Thank you,” he tells her.

When Harry heads to the ground level of the house, there she is, winding a scarf around her neck, facing the large mirror in the entryway. 

“You can stay and have breakfast if you like,” she tells Harry when she spots him in the mirror. He shakes his head, opens the guest closet to retrieve his coat. “Maggie sent me home with homemade crumpets last night.”

“Tempting,” Harry answers. He smiles at her. “You have a lovely home.”

“Which you never come to,” Grace answers. In her heels she’s nearly as tall at him, but Harry has to tilt his head down a little to meet her disapproving eyes. “We ought to have you over more often.”

“I understand Maeve holds a lot of your attention, Grace. Really, I cannot thank you and Merlin enough for having me over last night.”

“I’ve not even fed you breakfast,” Grace mutters. “And I am sending you out in the cold without a scarf,” she remarks when she opens the door. A cab is already waiting in front of the garden. “Would you like a lift home?”

Harry is waiting at the bottom of the steps, looking up at her, a fiery rose in a green woolen trench coat. She started colouring her hair, Harry notices as she walks down the stairs, but he cannot say when she started. Grace rolls her eyes at him when he takes her long hand and brings it to his lips.

“Fret not, mother,” he tells her. “I’ll find my way home.”

“ _Tempting_ ,” Grace answers, half mocking and half teasing. She brushes warm fingers to Harry’s already-cold nose. “It will work out, Harry,” she says gently. “Everything. Just quit being such a prat for a minute.” She kisses his cheek, checks him for lipstick stains, and follows Harry out of the garden and into the streets.

“I shall do my very best,” Harry tells her as she gets in her cab. “Thank you, Grace.”

She smiles at him through the tinted glass, and Harry nods at her when the cab drives off. He sighs, his breath visible in the humid morning air, and starts on the walk home.

Before walking inside the Mews, Harry takes a small detour by Caffe Nero next door to buy himself an almond croissant. The milk from his morning cuppa is sitting unpleasantly in his stomach. Back at the house Harry sits at the kitchen table with the viennoiserie, finds a quiet jazz station on the radio, and eats breakfast alone and sober in his kitchen for the first time in a long time.

Afterwards he looks at the answering machine in the entryway. From his vantage point, Harry can see the dry bar just out the corner of his eye, the gleaming crystal of the decanters. He breathes. Tries to pretend he doesn’t remember the sensation of Eggsy’s body against his in Paris, the crumbs in their filthy sheets, the way his mouth tasted of butter and chocolate and his skin of salt and sweat. He breathes.

Harry crosses the room in a few quick strides and presses _Play_ on the ansaphone.

_Harry, this is Chester King. Need I remind you we are still doing business together, or have you gone on vacation again? Selling your work is work of its own, Harry. I will be expecting to hear from you soon._

_Harry, this is Chester King. I am rather surprised, to say the least, not to have heard from you yet. I consider you as my equal, Harry, and would greatly appreciate that you show me the same respect I have shown you all these years. I will be expecting to hear from you soon._

_Hello, my name is Denise Pullman from the Times, and I was hoping to get a quote from Harry Hart regarding his work for Penguin Classics. You can reach me by phone at this number or by email at dee dot pullman at times dot co dot uk._

_Harry, this is Agatha Sullivan. I haven’t heard from you in a few days; is there anything going on that I need to know about? Please ring me when you get this message._

_Harry, this is Chester King. Your silence is worrying to say the least. Loyalty has always been a value of mine, not only to our peers but to our morals and ideals. We have always seen eye to eye on the subject. I’ll be expecting to hear from you soon._

_My name is Sean Oliver, I am working on a piece for the website Modern Eye and wanted to gather your thoughts on your work for Penguin Classics…_

_Harry, this is Agatha. I need to know if anything happened, Harry. Not only as your agent but as a loyal friend. Please, give me a ring soon._

_Hello, I am looking for Harry Hart, I write for the RSL and wanted to hear from him about his work for the Penguin Classics Designer Covers..._

_Harry, this is Chester King…_

_My name is Lalita Reed and I work for…_

_Hi, this is Amber Cortons…_

_Harry, this is Agatha…_

_Excuse me, I am Vincent Nguyen…_

It seems to last forever, an endless litany of requests both from his work entourage and complete strangers, journalists and writers, even a bold student writing a column for his university’s paper.

None of them are Eggsy, and Harry’s chest feels a little too tight when he realises he was actually, properly, _really_ hoping.

At the end Merlin’s voice sounds, soothing in its familiarity:

_I’m not entirely sure Grace told you, but I want to see you at 10 today at Stone Buildings. Be there. Don’t drink._

Harry breathes, considers the phone and the now-quiet answering machine next to it. Eggsy liked to make fun of it, poke fun at Harry’s _vintage_ home, the doilies under the silverware in the dining room cabinets or the old wallpaper in the guest room.

_He never quit calling it the guest room_ , Harry realises, staring at his phone. _Not because the room wasn’t his, but because he thought himself a guest._

And this Harry cannot understand. Eggsy is everywhere in the house, the way he leaned against Harry’s refrigerator to drink juice from the bottle or shaped his toes to the side of the coffee table when he watched the television late at night. Harry can’t watch the blueish light play on his walls and furniture without thinking of Eggsy. He can’t lay in bed or shower without thinking of Eggsy. He seems to bump into his ghost everywhere.

Alcohol made things blurrier. It made them sway in the cigarette smoke like a mirage in a sandstorm. It made it all feel like a bad dream.

_Don’t drink._

_You’re a fucking drunk._

Harry is awake. This is not a dream. He closes his eyes, reopens them. It’s gone 9. If he drinks now he will still be tipsy with it by 10. This is important. Things are important.

There are things left in the world. The world has not ended.

The world has not ended.

Harry breathes in, then out.

He goes upstairs, ignores pointedly the door to the guest room, and strides into his room. His suit goes into a cleaning bag. His underwear is thrown in the hamper with nary a look at one of Eggsy’s socks, forgotten there, green and grey and patterned with garishly orange hot dogs. Harry showers again, if only for the comfort of his own products and their familiar scents. He goes on with his morning routine silently, quickly and efficiently, and wears a grey woolen suit.

After phoning for a cab downstairs, Harry glances at the drawing room. From there he can see the end table and the sketchbook still sitting on it, ajar like a door. Harry blinks and rubs his thumb to the inside of his little finger.

The ring gleams softly when Harry opens the sketchbook. The gold reflects off the makeshift ring box, the smooth paper like soft satin to nestle the signet there. That cushion has a crease in the shape of the quick, long line striking through _Galatea_.

Harry puts the signet ring back on, considers the smudged sketch dating back to nearly a year ago.

He closes the sketchbook but leaves it on the end table in the drawing room.

Harry makes it to Merlin’s office at 10:03, precisely. It should probably tip him off when Merlin doesn’t say anything and just walks straight back into his office. Harry murmurs a greeting to Hugo and follows hurriedly.

“I dug out your contracts today,” Merlin says without preamble. He indicates a file box on his desk, the small pile of papers next to it. “Let’s fix those cock-ups.”

And he does.

Merlin tells Harry about Agatha. He points out the worrying lack of interview requests, especially coming from established papers and websites, well-known journalists and writers. He shows Harry lists of numbers he’d scratched on a sheet of paper, _This is how many emails you rerouted to her_ , and _You told me you got calls for requests sometimes_. Finally, muttered sarcastically, _And none of them sounded promising._

There are protests, of course, reminders of Agatha’s loyalty, of how well things were going at the start of Harry’s career.

“I am passé,” Harry tells Merlin about a half hour in. “What sounds most probable? My agent deliberately not doing the work I ask of her, or me having gone out of style?”

“The phone calls,” Merlin says coldly. “The emails you received. That bloody commission from Penguin Classics—are they taking on has-beens now, Harry?”

Harry pinches his lips.

“Speaking of phone calls,” Merlin continues. “King does not seem to email you a lot, but you mentioned he rings you quite often. What about Agatha?”

“Less often than he does, but now and then. One or two times a week, normally.”

Merlin reclines in his chair and studies him for a moment.

“Could I ask you, if perhaps you don’t mind,” Merlin says, overly polite. “What they both say in those messages?”

Harry licks his lips, once, twice. He sees Merlin’s point, he thinks. So he talks.

_Harry, this is Chester King._

_Harry, this is Agatha._

_Loyalty has always been a value of mine…_

_...as a loyal friend._

_You have a reputation that you have worked hard on._

_You have a reputation, Harry. You have worked hard on it._

_I know you, Harry._

_Harry, I know you._

_That sort of thing is not what is expected of you._

_That sort of thing is not what is expected of you._

When Harry can’t remember more, Merlin urges him on. He shows emails to Harry on his tablet, asks about the dates, the times, the distance between two different ones. He points at lines Agatha wrote with a pencil and aims the sharp end at Harry for a second before he quotes one of the messages Harry relayed. Merlin is moving constantly, taking notes or pushing papers to the side, grabbing his tablet then rushing to type something on his computer. He stands to make tea at some point, talks louder over the boiling of the kettle to encourage Harry to do the same.

Harry’s throat feels dry and tight by the time they break for tea. Merlin slides a tin of Walkers shortbread out of a desk drawer and shoves an entire biscuit in his mouth before offering the tartan-patterned tin to Harry.

“I would enjoy a cigarette as well, if you wouldn’t mind,” Harry says while Merlin brushes shortbread crumbs off his jumper.

They bring their teas outside. The smoke and the steam from their cups surround them. The Inn is quiet, people keeping to their offices and homes in waiting for lunchtime. A guard walks down the main road off Stone Buildings, turns and nods at them. The gravel crunches loudly under his boots.

“I feel stupid,” Harry mutters against the filtre of his cigarette. His breath is thick and white in the cold air.

“I usually bring three biscuits and eat them in silence,” Merlin answers. “Take a break, Harry.”

Harry laughs and gives Merlin a minute of peace to smoke and eat his bloody shortbread. 

“Thank you,” he says gently. “To you, and to Grace as well. You two are very lucky.”

“Luck has nothing to do with it, Harry. It’s work. Work worth doing, mind,” Merlin answers. He looks somewhere in the distance, pulls on his cigarette. “We committed to each other. Grace and I are partners.”

Harry considers his words.

“Your work paid off, then.”

“No.” Merlin shakes his head. He bites off half a piece of shortbread, has the decency to put his fist in front of his lips when he adds: “It’s not about a payoff. And the work isn’t done. It will never be, not as long as Grace and I are with each other, which—” he chews, swallows, makes a dismissive gesture with his hand.

“I admire your certainty.”

“I trust myself,” Merlin says. “I trust Grace. And I trust our partnership.”

It sounds so final, so Harry nods once, twice, and lets Merlin eat his third biscuit in silence.

They work for another hour afterwards. Merlin pushes Harry out for confidential calls with other clients two times. Under Hugo’s watchful eyes, he checks his cellphone. No missed calls. No new messages. _Shit, fuck, hell_ , Harry thinks, and he closes his eyes for a second when the memory of Eggsy floods his mind like a flash of light. Merlin is quick to usher him back inside his office and distract him.

“This is your contract with Penguin Classics, regarding the Penguin Designer Classics commission. We have observed repeated occurrences of Ms Sullivan and Mr King’s words matching uncomfortably with each other. Furthermore, we have reason to suspect confidential information regarding the work done for Penguin Classics has been passed on to Mr King by Ms Sullivan, given he has made remarks one could not have made without having knowledge of what the work looked like.” Merlin talks slowly but surely, steady and sure in his exposé. “If you look to section 7 of the contract, detailing the non-disclosure agreement in place between Penguin Classics and Mr Hart—that is you—you will see that you are not to share any information regarding the work with anyone unaffiliated with the commission. Now, according to the addendum detailing who these people are, Ms Agatha Sullivan, acting as your agent, has a right to view the work, but is held to the same standards of confidentiality as you are.”

When Merlin stops, Harry keeps staring at him. He blinks, looks at the too-small text printed on the signed and approved contract in front of him.

“Furthermore,” Merlin says, “This is the contract signed in 1985 between Ms Agatha Sullivan and Mr Harry Hart, reviewed, amended, and signed by both parties in 1989, 1993, 1999, 2006, and 2014. In all revisions, section 4 remained unchanged but for brief revisions in 1999 that only added to it. This section details the non-disclosure agreement between the two parties. Amongst other things, it explicitly extends any need for confidentiality you may encounter in your work to your agent.”

“So Agatha broke both contracts?” Harry frowns.

“We have reason to believe Ms Sullivan broke both contracts,” Merlin corrects pointedly.

_Your loyal friend._

“Shit,” Harry mutters. He leans back, rubs a hand over his face. “And now?”

“And now,” Merlin says. He checks his watch. “You have two hours for lunch and a bit of rest. We are meeting Agatha at 3, and I have a client coming in in twelve minutes.”

“Excuse me?”

“Eleven minutes, Harry. Most of my clients are usually on time, if not early.”

“Just like this,” Harry says. He gets up feebly, blinks when Merlin stands. Just like this, he may end a thirty-one year old work relationship.

“Not _just like this_ , Harry,” Merlin answers as Harry puts on his coat. “At this point, this is years in the making, and in my opinion we should have caught what the fuck was going on way sooner.” He glances at his watch. “Ten minutes.”

“Well,” Harry flounders. He opens his mouth, closes it, smiles, and nods. “I will see you at 3.”

“Precisely!” Merlin calls as Harry opens the door. He doesn’t answer. “Harry! _Precisely_!”

Hugo laughs openly from his spot at the reception desk, and Harry smiles all the way out the building.

His smile falls when his first instinct is to find his cellphone to ring Eggsy or send him a message. He stares at the dark screen for a second before slipping his cell back inside his chest pocket.

For lunch he heads to the Knights Templar a few minutes away, if only for a pint of Guinness and a plate of steak and kidney pie. It’s cheap, good, comforting, and Harry feels a bit stronger afterwards, a bit readier for what follows. Fortified. He gets a cup of tea from a nearby Pret, drinks it slowly inside the coffee shop but keeps the last few sips to savour outside with a cigarette. Blissfully, it is not raining, but the skies are grey and heavy. Threatening.

Harry flags down a cab and works on slowing his breathing all the way to Cork Street.

“Thank you for accommodating us on such short notice,” Merlin greets Agatha, polite but cold.

“It seemed urgent,” Agatha says rigidly, her lips pressed together in a thin line, the ever-present wrinkle between her penciled eyebrows deepened by obvious worry. “My solicitor couldn’t make it, sadly. He will be joining us over the phone.”

Harry is well-acquainted with Agatha’s solicitor, a pallid man in his mid-sixties and a wrinkle away from retirement. The reception is good but Malcolm Clarke sounds faint nonetheless when they all greet each other and settle on either side of Agatha’s desk, gathering papers and tablets. While Merlin and Agatha get ready, Harry studies his agent. She was a beautiful woman once, Miss Sullivan, her radiance dimming as she became _Mrs_ Sullivan… Sullivan- _something_. She had never quite gotten it back after her inevitable divorce in the early noughties. Age, instead of softening the sharpness of her features, had deepened it into something almost sickly. It had given her the seriousness of old engravings, emerging out of pristine pantsuits and perched on kitten heels.

“I will go straight to the point,” Merlin says. “This meeting regards suspicions of multiple, repeated contract violations by Agatha Sullivan.”

A sigh sounds over the phone, crackling too loudly. “Miss Sullivan, I advise you not to answer any questions or comment in any way until Mr MacKay has explained where these _suspicions_ could possibly come from.”

Harry keeps his eyes trained on Agatha as Merlin recites, dates and quotes, pulls out papers then taps on his tablet to show Harry's very own emails. Hers are darting all over the desk, shooting up to stare at Merlin then back down at the phone.

“All this so-called evidence is circumstantial,” Clarke enunciates, cutting Merlin off. “Do you really find it so surprising that people of Miss Sullivan’s status share similar ideals with their peers?”

“I admit to be more concerned with how long she has been Mr King’s _peer_ ,” Merlin answers. “Miss Sullivan came highly recommended by Mr King, who employed her as a secretary as she was going through university, then for another eighteen months.”

Harry blinks. Agatha has gone a little pale. She isn't looking at anything.

“Mr MacKay, you possibly can't be—”

“I am suggesting the loyalty Miss Sullivan and Mr King think so highly of might be towards each other in the first place.” Merlin pauses. “Or at least that Miss Sullivan has always been _loyal_ , first and foremost, to Mr King.”

Harry raises numbly when Clarke asks them for a moment in private with his client. He and Merlin step outside to stare at the plastic plants gathering dust in what passes for Agatha’s waiting room. The walls were light blue once, yellowed into an aged mint colour now; the chairs creak under their weight to match the sound of Harry's knees. He vaguely remembers sitting in that tiny room what seems like a century ago, feeling invincible in his brand-new Kingsman suit, living in a one-bedroom in Soho where his easels stood in the middle of the living room or on top of the kitchen counter. Even then Agatha had been impersonal but full of praise, sweet as Splenda and professional to a fault. They had never gotten close, not in the way Harry had with Merlin and his family.

But even then there has always been a polite distance, which Harry felt was only proper to keep with someone he worked with.

_Why couldn't you keep that distance with Eggsy then?_

The thought pops into Harry's head like a spark, makes his shoulders go tight and his skin prickle anxiously. _He wouldn't let me._ That—that sinks like a stone in Harry's stomach, and he wants to drown it in gin.

_Nobody made me for you. Nobody. Not even you, Harry. You didn’t make me._ I _made me._

Fuck that, bugger it all to hell and back, Harry wants to drown _himself_ in gin. _I can't handle this sober_ , he thinks; clears his throat to convince himself it needn't be full of liquor and talks so he stops feeling as though sentences are choking him, words jumbled bulky and painful in his throat.

“Eggsy told me, about my work, that it couldn't all be on others,” he tells Merlin quietly. “How could I let this happen?”

“You get distracted easily, Harry.” Merlin sighs, fidgets a little on his chair. “This didn't happen over a month, either. It was gradual.”

Harry blinks. “The boiling frog.”

Next to him, Merlin laughs humorlessly. “Quite.”

Before either of them can say any more, the door to Agatha’s office opens and she walks out, standing too tall, to invite them back inside.

As soon as they are seated Clarke starts talking. “I hope you do realise your evidence is highly circumstantial, Mr MacKay.” Merlin doesn't say anything, doesn't blink. “I doubt either of us wants this to end in a tribunal.”

“Of course,” Merlin says amicably. “We have not come here to discuss putting Miss Sullivan on trial. Simply to sever her ties to Mr Hart.”

Agatha still doesn't say anything. Even as Merlin talks of a summary dismissal for gross misconduct, even as Clarke raises his voice, she doesn't so much as look at Harry. She has always been a polite woman, a very specific breed of English with platitudes always at the ready, and seeing her so quiet feels fitting. Her words had as much substance in them as her silence does currently. Harry tries to picture her at—eighteen, nineteen? Working for King, bringing the little silver tray full of teasmade, Chester himself in his early forties turning to a guest to tell them, _Pretty bird, isn't she?_

The thought makes an overwhelming wave of pity wash over Harry. He tunes out for a second while Merlin speaks about many substantial reasons to dismiss Agatha, wonders if Eggsy felt as trapped as she is. If Harry himself does, as the man likes to remind him, have this much in common with Chester King.

“I don’t care for Harry's money,” Agatha says, and both the room and Harry's head go quiet. “I care that these accusations do not spread.”

“I doubt you’re in a position to make any sort of demands,” Harry bites out before he can stop himself. 

Agatha’s eyes settle on him for just a second before Clarke speaks and she turns her gaze to the phone. “And I doubt you’re in a position to attempt to make any sort of threat or intimidate Miss Sullivan in any way, Mr Hart.”

“So we all want the same thing, really,” Merlin says breezily, leaning to grab his briefcase, effectively dismissing any upcoming fight.

Harry's heart pounds in his throat still, blocking out the words and the questions that want to tumble out. He wants to know _why_ , really; why she played with his career, with him.

But he knows Agatha played him only a fraction of how much Chester played her. 

She sits prim and blank-faced as Merlin explains her employment as Harry's agent will end immediately, due to her recent performance and repeated breaches of various non-disclosure agreements. Neither Clarke or Agatha argue, and Harry wonders what she told her solicitor behind closed doors, alone with her conscience and her arse to save—and Chester’s as well. How badly is she burning herself just to keep Chester King warm? How has she not crumbled to ashes right now?

_The boiling frog_ , Harry remembers when Merlin slides him two copies of Agatha’s dismissal to initial and sign. He can't hear a word of what follows, of whatever legalese the solicitors exchange.

“If there is nothing else to discuss on your end,” Merlin says eventually, papers and tablet tucked back inside his briefcase. He looks at Harry first, wide eyes and raised eyebrows, then at Agatha.

Neither of them say a word.

There is nothing Agatha could say to make this better, in the end. Nothing can fix this broken bridge that took years to break down, little by little. Harry stands up and looks at the Venice watercolours on the walls, pale, bleached off their original beauty.

Agatha stands, nods, pale, and Harry walks out of her office with one last look at the yellowed walls as he and Merlin make their way down the steps and out the door. The October wind is as cold as a slap to the face, and Harry staggers for a moment in front of a closed door he won't open again.

He breathes in and feels a knot untie in his chest, just one but one at least. “Just like that.”

“Oh, you’ll receive my extra expenses by the 25th as usual,” Merlin tells him, his voice muffled as he cups his hands to light a cigarette. “And you only managed to get out by letting it get to a point where King and Sullivan were becoming careless enough that I could catch them because you _let_ that happen, Hart.”

Harry looks at him for a moment—scarf tucked in the same way Grace’s was this morning, a cap on his head. “Have you ever failed? Lost?” Harry asks him, the wind making a bird’s nest of his hair.

“All the time.” Merlin is quiet, frowning in grey London with the bright red ember of his cigarette glowing as he pulls on the filtre. “But I get back up.”

“I can't imagine you ever _losing_.”

Merlin huffs humorlessly. “Sometimes there are no winners, and no losers.” He looks at Harry, dark eyes behind his glasses and the shadow of the rim of his cap. “This isn't how this works,” he says, gesturing at the mixture of old brick and modern buildings lining Cork Street, the world at large.

“And… King, now,” Harry asks slowly, cautiously, as Merlin leads them towards Piccadilly quickly, “What about him?”

“Well I’m torn between whether Agatha is already on the phone with him, or if she has enough professionalism not to,” Merlin says around a cloud of smoke, eyeing Piccadilly for a cab. “We’ll find out soon enough. If there's one thing that man can't do, it's leave his artists be. Swear to God, Harry, when Rox—”

Merlin stops abruptly then, eyes fixed on Harry’s, dark and quickly unreadable. He turns away and pulls on his cigarette, keeps watching the crawl of lorries and busy cabs and busses down Piccadilly and hides his expression behind professionalism and smoke. The light turns green, and they both watch people cross the road, in suits and ratty jeans, pushing buggies and holding stacks of boxes. The world hasn’t ended on Saturday, and it doesn’t seem ready to end any time soon. Children still cry for their dummies, and young students in cheap green jackets still try to save the Earth. The weight of his signet felt unfamiliar earlier after not wearing it for so— _little_ , really, barely a year. Now when Harry’s thumb swipes over his aged skin he ends with feeling the solid gold again.

The world hasn’t ended on Saturday.

“I know Miss Morton employs you,” Harry tells Merlin as he stubs out his cigarette to bin it.

He smiles. Barely there, just a wrinkle moving higher. “She wouldn’t have signed with King without a fight anyway.”

_But you did_ , a voice says in Harry’s head, one that sounds like his or Eggsy’s. He watches Merlin signal a cab over, two long fingers beckoning the car closer to the kerb.

“Hello—Stone Buildings, please,” Merlin says quickly, folding himself in the backseat. “No need to take you on, I reckon,” he tells Harry. “Unless you're headed to the studio.”

Harry thinks about it for a millisecond before dismissing the idea of Eggsy’s eyes painted in too many shades of green and blue starting at him on the canvas. He shakes his head no; shakes his head to make the thought fall out like raindrops after a sudden Spring shower.

“What of King?” Harry tells him hurriedly, the driver tapping the wheel. “What do I do?”

Merlin reaches out, his dark eyes planted in Harry's, and he holds Harry’s arm for an instant before taking hold of the door handle instead. “You wait for things to go pear-shaped.”

The cab is quick to pull back in traffic, and Harry stands on the kerb almost out of breath.

_Wait for things to go pear-shaped._

The world ended, or did not, and all Harry has to do is wait for it to crumble further; the house of cards toppled and shredded and ready to be burnt to ashes.

Harry does what he has always done, flags down a cab of his own to Kensington and stops the driver near Gloucester Road station. He ignores the places Eggsy walked, where they fought, where they kissed; and walks in and out of Waitrose with a bottle of Bombay Sapphire and a fresh pack of Rothmans.

At half six Harry is sitting in the kitchen, a cigarette between his fingers, smoke curling out of his parted lips. It only made him thirstier, the cigarette, and he keeps cradling the bottle, feeling the cold blue glass, listening to the swishing of the gin inside. It’s gone dark outside, and in the neons of the kitchen, every gold detail on the label stands out. Harry stubs out the cigarette in an ashtray, runs the pad of his thumb over the rough matte seal of the cap, then over the quality sticker. His mouth feels dry and he can taste it, feel it, the pine scent of it, the fresh liquor, crisp florals melting into a soothing burn like early flower buds. Harry turns it over, over, over; looks at stern Queen Victoria and her jewels and lets his nail linger over the sticker thinking of his own Black Prince and the ring that found its way back on his fingers.

The house phone rings. Harry ignores it, runs a hand over his face and grabs the neck of the bottle when he realises it could be Chester.

When a soft, deep voice sounds instead, Harry stops seeing the bottle and listens.

“My name is Cecil Lucas,” the voicemail begins. There's a slight hesitation, then, “I am an agent and would be very interested in representing Mr Harry Hart.” The voice is faint but sure. “You can reach me at this number or, well, I have an office in Soho on Brewer Street. I look forward to hearing from you.”

After some muffled sounds the ansaphone beeps, and Harry sets the bottle down on the table.

He remembers himself last year, telling Merlin about Miss Morton and her probable work with King. The beginning of the year and Eggsy next to him with languid, lovely eyes asking Harry if he could see how he looked at him. Roxy confident and lovely, exuberantly showing her love and telling him, _We know what we want_.

The world is not ending.

Harry sets the bottle of Bombay Sapphire in the dry bar and eats half a tin of cold baked beans for tea. He doesn't listen to the message again. He doesn't look at the closed sketchbook still sitting on the end table in the drawing room. He eats, doesn't drink, and forces casualness into folding and putting away Eggsy’s forgotten sleep shirt in the guest room, next to his birthday presents.

When Harry's chest starts to ache, he goes to lie down in his pyjamas, unshaven and dizzy, the day’s clothes hung up and his signet ring in its ceramic dish.

By the time Harry falls asleep, the world isn’t finished ending yet.


End file.
